Dele Alli Stays Unattached After Como Cut in September
Dele Alli, 30, remains without a club after Como terminated his contract in September. The former Tottenham midfielder is still a free agent, a sharp turn from the days when he was a guaranteed starter for England.
Tottenham To Free Agency
Alli joined Tottenham in a £5 million move in 2015 and was once described as the crown jewel of the club's midfield. He also became a regular for the Three Lions before his decline, making the current pause in his career more striking than a routine release.
His route since then has been uneven. He had a difficult spell at Everton and a loan spell in Turkey with Besiktas before Como moved on from him in September. That left him looking for the next club while trying to rebuild the form that once made him one of the league's most sought-after young midfielders.
Jordan Buck On Alli's Rise
Former MK Dons defender Jordan Buck said he first saw Alli as a player who could glide through midfield and find a pass in the final third. He described the movement as similar to Mousa Dembele and Yaya Toure, saying, "He was so skinny, but he just used to just glide past people. This was just a tall frame, just knows when to touch the ball, when to shift his body. And he just cut through players. Like the way Mousa Dembele and Yaya Toure used to drive past players, not like an Eden Hazard or a Mohamed Salah. He’d drop so deep, get the ball directly from the keeper and just glide through from his box, through the midfield, and then he’s finding a pass in the final third."
Buck also said, "I had no idea who he was. That day, I had no idea," and later recalled, "There’s just this tall, skinny dude just picking up the ball and just driving through everyone. He was unreal. He was just shining through. Kind of similarly to Yann Gueho, I think not as explosive, erratic and showboaty as Yann. But definitely had a similar sort of impact on the pitch. He’d take care of bringing the ball up the entire length of the pitch. And I was in shock." The same eye for detail carried through his memories of Adel Taarabt, whom he called "the best player that I have ever seen up close and personal."
Alli's Next Move
Alli's challenge now is simple to state and harder to solve: he needs a club willing to back a 30-year-old whose career has already moved through Tottenham, Everton, Besiktas and Como. The September termination made the reset immediate, and every month without a signing keeps the gap wider between the player he was at Tottenham and the free agent he is now.
