Dele Alli opens up about his career, his health and his demons

July 14 - In recent seasons few English football fans have failed to understand why Dele Alli, one of the game's most naturally gifted players, seemed to be failing to realize his undeniable potential.< /p>

The career of the former England international, who is still only 27 years old, seems to be deteriorating rapidly.

Now, in a brave and remarkably candid interview about his life off the pitch, Dele has opened up about childhood sexual abuse and how he recently spent six weeks in rehab in the United States in the purpose of coping with mental disorders. health issues resulting from a traumatic childhood and after becoming addicted to sleeping pills.

Dele was one of the greatest talents in the English game, a member of the national team that reached the semi-finals of the World Cup in 2018 after a period of rising to prominence within the Tottenham's young team of Mauricio Pochettino who almost won the Premier League.

He joined Everton on a two-and-a-half-year deal in February last year in a bid to revive his career after seven years at Tottenham, before joining Turkish side Besiktas on loan for the 2022 season -23. .

To explain how his career went off the rails, Dele chose to be interviewed by former England defender and TV pundit Gary Neville to open up about the issues affecting him.

Among them was the revelation that he had been abused at the age of six, that he had started taking drugs at eight years old and, later, that he had an addiction to sleeping pills that he said he was taking "just to escape reality".< /p>

"It's been a long time, without realizing it, the things I was doing to numb the feelings I had. I didn't know I was doing it for that purpose, whether it was to drink or what whatever."

"There are things that a lot of people do, but if you abuse them and use them in the wrong way and you're not really doing it for fun, you're doing it to try to chase something away or hiding from something, obviously it can hurt you a lot. I got addicted to sleeping pills and it's probably a problem that I don't just have. I think it's something that happens more than people think in football."

Dele said he decided to check into a drug, mental health and trauma rehabilitation center after learning he needed surgery after returning from his loan spell in April .

“I got caught in a bad cycle. I relied on things that hurt me. I woke up every day and won the fight, trained, smiled, showed that I was happy but inside I was definitely losing the battle and it was time for me to change it."

Ali, who was later adopted at age 12 by a family he described as amazing, added, "Rehab...has all this stigma around it. "It's something people don't want to do. It sounds really scary. I never could have imagined how much I would get out of it and how much it would help me mentally, because I was in a bad place. It happened. A lot happened when I was younger that I could never understand."

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