Dele Alli reveals the traumas of his childhood: sexual abuse at the age of six, abandonment and sale of drugs

give it therewhose career has taken a nosedive in recent seasons, revealed Thursday that he was sexually abused when he was six years old and began dealing drugs two years later.

The Everton player, capped by England on 37 occasions, also confessed that he was recently forced to enter a rehabilitation clinic for six weeks to overcome an addiction to sleeping pills.

Ali, 27, made these statements on The Overlap podcast, in an interview with former Manchester United player Gary Neville, to whom he openly exposed how some episodes from the past have affected his mental health and his professional career.

Considered in its beginnings as one of the great promises of British football, the midfielder admitted that he was about to hang up his boots at just 24 years of age.

“To be honest, my childhood is something he hasn’t talked about much. My mother was an alcoholic. They sent me to Africa (with her father) to learn discipline, and then they sent me back. At the age of seven I started smoking, at eight I was dealing drugs”, says Alli.

Luckily, he remembers, he was adopted at the age of 12 by the “wonderful family” Hickford: “I couldn’t have found better people for what they have done for me.”

Despite the efforts of his new parents and brother to get him to talk about his problems with them, Alli laments that he “couldn’t,” that he “just wanted to deal with it myself.”

The footballer made the great professional leap by signing for Tottenham Hotspurs, of the English Premier League, in 2015, after training at MK Dons in his hometown of Milton Keynes, northwest of London, with good performances that also earned him the call of the national team to participate in the 2018 World Cup.

However, he was already fighting then, he specifies, against a “terrifying” addiction to drugs against insomnia and against his dependence on alcohol.

“I got addicted to sleeping pills and it’s probably a problem that’s not just me. I think it is something that is more widespread in the world of football than people think,” Alli warns.

He assures that these drugs and alcohol served him to “numb the feelings” and that “it kept working” the next day: “Until they stop working, that is the problem.”

“Yeah, I was definitely using too much. It was terrifying, now I have left it and I can look back”, celebrates the player.

In that rearview mirror appears what is “probably the saddest moment for me,” he said, in his first spell at Tottenham under Portuguese coach Jose Mourinho.

“I think I was 24 years old. One morning I got up and had to go train. That was the moment when (the coach) stopped putting me (to play). I may sound dramatic, but he was asking me if he should stop, at 24, doing what he loved.”

Now he wants to rebuild his career at Everton, after returning from a loan from Spurs to Turkish Besiktas in 2022 and undergoing knee surgery in the United States.

“When I returned from Turkey (…) I realized that I was not mentally well and I decided to enter a modern rehabilitation clinic,” said Alli, who thanks his new club for its support “to make the most important decision” of his life.