Dele Alli reveals past struggles in emotional interview with Gary Neville | OneFootball

Dele Alli has opened up about his past struggles in an emotional new interview with Gary Neville.

The Everton midfielder has revealed that he spent time in rehab after returning from his loan spell at Turkish club Besiktas.

Alli burst onto the scene with Tottenham Hotspur and became one of English football’s most promising players under the guidance of manager Mauricio Pochettino.

But following the Argentine’s departure from the club, Alli has struggled to maintain the level he had previously shown.

Unfancied by Jose Mourinho, Nuno Espirito Santo, and Antonio Conte, he was sold to Everton in January 2022.

But Alli failed to establish himself in the Toffees’ first team and spent last season on loan at Besiktas.

That spell did not go to plan either, with the midfielder failing to impress and even booed by fans at one point.

Alli reveals he went to rehab

Alli’s dip in his football career left many people wondering what was happening behind the scenes.

But the 27-year-old sat down with United legend Neville for an episode of The Overlap where he opened up about his struggles.

Neville shared the interview on his social media channels, describing it as, "the most emotional, difficult yet inspirational conversation I’ve ever had in my life."

“I think mentally I’m probably in the best place I’ve ever been, and I feel good," Alli said to start off the interview.

"Obviously injured at the minute, but I’ve got that passion back for football – I’m doing really well.

“Yeah, I think now is probably the right time for me to tell people what’s been going on.

"It’s tough to talk about because it’s quite recent and it’s something I’ve kind of hid for a long time – and I’m scared to talk about it, but I think it’s the right thing to do."

“When I came back from Turkey I found out I needed an operation. I was in a bad place mentally and I decided to go to a modern day rehab facility for mental health," he would go on to say. "They deal with addiction, mental health, and trauma because it was something I felt like it was time for.

“You can’t be told to go there, I think you have to know, and you have to make the decision yourself, otherwise it’s not going to work and yeah, to be honest, I was caught in a bad cycle – you know. I was relying on things that were doing me harm and yeah, I think I was waking up every day and I was winning the fight, you know, going into training, smiling, showing that I was happy.

"But inside, I was definitely losing the battle and it was time for me to change it because when I got injured and they told me I needed surgery, I could feel the feelings I had when the cycle begins and I didn’t want it to happen anymore."

Alli opens up about addiction

After Neville asked about the things Alli was doing which were not helping him, the player revealed that he would drink and do other things to numb the internal feelings that he had at the time.

"They're things that a lot of people do, but if you abuse it and use it in the wrong way and you're not actually doing it for the pleasure you're doing it to chase something or hide from something, it can obviously damage you alot."

He then went on to discuss his addiction to sleeping tablets and described how it was a widespread issue in football.

"Hopefully me coming out and speaking about it can help people because, don't get me wrong, they work.

"With our schedule you have a game, you have to be up early in the morning to train, you've got all the adrenaline and stuff so sometimes to take a sleeping tablet and be ready for the next day is fine.

"But when you're as broken as I am, it can obviously have the reverse effect because it does work for the problems you want to deal with and that is the problem, it works until it doesn't."

Despite admitting that he would sometimes not take them for extensive periods of time, Alli admits that he would not really ever deal with the issue.

But he said that the root of the problem was the trauma that he had while growing up, saying that he tried to deal with it on his own without opening up to anyone.

He would hide the addiction from his family and everyone else around him.

"They could see it in me, I wasn't who I was, I lost myself for a few years and I was just turning everyone away.

"I had the family who saved my life crying and asking me to tell them what's wrong and I just didn't want to do it."

Alli reveals shocking details about his childhood

Later in the chat, Neville asks Alli about the trauma from his childhood that was, as he terms it, "the root of the problem."

Neville pointed out that there were signs from the outside, the main one being that Alli had changed the name on the back of his shirt.

The midfielder had previously stated that he had made the change because he felt no connection with his surname.

And Alli, bravely, revealed shocking details about his childhood.

"So, at six, I was molested by my mum's friend, who was at the house a lot. My mum was an alcoholic, and that happened at six. I was sent to Africa to learn discipline, and then I was sent back."

It was at this point that both Neville and Alli became visibly emotional, with the former comforting the interviewee on set.

Gary Neville comforts Dele Alli on The Overlap.

"At seven, I started smoking, eight I started dealing drugs," Alli went on to say. "An older person told me that they wouldn't stop a kid on a bike, so I rode around with my football, and then underneath I'd have the drugs, that was eight.

"Eleven, I was hung off a bridge by a guy from the next estate, a man.

"Twelve, I was adopted – and from then, it was like – I was adopted by an amazing family like I said, I couldn't have asked for better people to do what they'd done for me. If God created people, it was them."

Alli went on to say that rehab had made him more understanding of his mum's situation.

"I had no rules, I grew up without any rules. Like I said, my mum she drank a lot and I don't blame her at all for what happened.

"Me going into rehab now has helped me understand her – it was all she knew. Like, even when she let me go and I got adopted, she knew and I knew that it was what was needed to even have a chance of living the life I wanted to live and be successful. And because it was only going one way if I stayed there."

Alli nearly retired at 24 but now wants to kick on

During his struggles, Alli admitted to Neville that it started to impact his focus on football.

He said that he had even contemplated retiring in his mid-twenties.

“One morning I woke up and I had to go training,” he said.

“I remember staring in the mirror and I was asking if I could retire now. At 24. Doing the thing I love.

“For me that was heartbreaking.”

Now though, as he continues to work on his return to football, Alli has said that he is focused on getting back to his best.

"I know what I can do on the pitch," he said. "I think I've showed people what I can do on the pitch and now I've got the feeling back like before I went to Tottenham when I had a lot to prove and I felt so much love and passion about football.

"I have that back which for me is something that I've missed for probably longer than I wanted to.

"But with the other side of it I want to inspire people not only on the pitch but off the pitch. In a way that probably isn't spoken about enough, from experience."

The full interview is incredibly open and brave from Alli. You can watch it in full for yourselves below.