Dele Alli reveals how he learned the #DeleChallenge goal celebration | OneFootball

We finally know who is responsible for the hand gesture which recently sparked a social media craze … and it isn’t Dele Alli.

The Tottenham and England midfielder posted a video to his official social media channels last month in which he made a seemingly impossible shape with his thumb and forefinger, and confused copycats quickly tried to emulate the gesture.

According to one recent report, some Muslim conspiracy theorists even believed the ‘Dele Challenge’ was actually salute to the devil in the form of a tribute to evil figure Dajjal.

But the 22-year-old has now revealed he actually learned it from a pretty unlikely and perfectly innocent source.

“When we were at the World Cup, there were a few days when the families could come to the hotel,” Alli told the Evening Standard.

“One afternoon, Jamie Vardy’s kids were around and they asked me if I could do it. I could but then I watched the other boys struggling, it was funny.

“I heard afterwards that Jesse Lingard’s brother had showed them how to do it, so I don’t actually know where it came from and who made it up, but when I was on holiday with my friends we all kept doing it, so I shared it.

“I didn’t think it was going to go as mad as it did. It’s just a bit of fun.”

So if you’re still feeling inadequate about your inability to pull off the ‘Dele Challenge’, it probably won’t make you feel any better to learn that it was invented by actual children.