It was quite the opening statement. Dele Alli, 24 minutes into his first start in a Tottenham Hotspur shirt, suckered in Luka Modric of Real Madrid, nutmegged him and accelerated away. The 70,000 sell-out crowd at Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena roared at the 19-year-old’s sheer impudence.
"We had a laugh about it in the tunnel afterwards; he was very good about it,” Alli said. "He shook my hand and said to me: ‘You little bugger’ – or something like that. I didn’t shout ‘nuts’ when I did it. I used to do that when I was young and get told off for it."
As Alli spoke at the Allianz after Tuesday’s 2-0 Audi Cup victory, some of Real’s galácticos filed past. This time last year the midfielder was preparing for MK Dons’ League One season opener against Gillingham. His previous competitive game was for MK against Yeovil in May. Alli says “unreal” and “surreal” on a number of occasions and it is little wonder.
This is a young player of conviction. If the nutmeg on one of Europe’s top midfielders was an instinctive move, his overall performance was characterised by a desire to seize the moment. Alli was direct and he ran hard from box-to-box, showing the stamina that has had members of staff rating him as the fittest player at White Hart Lane.
Alli signed for Tottenham in a £5m deal last February but was loaned back to MK to help them with their promotion push, which was ultimately successful. But he is with Tottenham now and he has no intention of going on another loan. Moreover he has played himself into contention for Saturday’s Premier League opener at Manchester United.
His competition for a spot in central midfield comes from Nabil Bentaleb, Ryan Mason and even Eric Dier, who has been used by the manager, Mauricio Pochettino, as a defensive midfielder in pre-season, rather than his more recognised position of centre-half. Dier has been solid, if a little stodgy on the ball, and Mason returned from a knee injury only as a second-half substitute against Milan on Wednesday.
"Hopefully, I can get into the team for the Manchester United game, which feels a bit unreal to say," Alli said. "I know it is a cliche but I am just going to focus on each game and try to do as well as I can. Hopefully I won’t go on loan’ I don’t want to do that. I would like to play as much as I can and help the team as much as I can."
Alli has previous against United. He was a part of the MK team that beat them 4-0 in last season’s Capital One Cup, although he is expecting a rather tougher game on Saturday. Louis van Gaal picked an experimental United side that night and he has moved on plenty of the players involved. Alli was excellent and it was perhaps the moment when Tottenham, and others, became convinced of his talent.
"You could say it helped me get noticed," Alli said. “We had a good year as a team and that was one of the stand-out matches. It was a great platform for the club and me, and a few of the other players.
"It was a bit surreal against United. It was a game we didn’t really expect to win, let alone win by that much. We showed the world what we could do that night but I am expecting a tougher game this time. The whole summer has been about preparing for this game at Old Trafford. It will be a dream come true for me.”
Alli also featured as a 69th-minute substitute for Bentaleb against Milan and he admitted that his experience at the Audi Cup was a pinch-me moment. "After the Madrid game I did think a bit about how far I’d come," Alli said. “But hopefully I am going to play in many big games now so I can’t afford to get carried away with it.
"To be honest, I didn’t look at the team-sheet before kick-off because I didn’t want to get too carried away with who I was playing against. I wanted to concentrate on my own game. That was a conscious decision I made beforehand. I just wanted to focus on me."
