Dele Alli was offered a way back into football by a former manager, but has now gone more than a year without playing a match

Former Tottenham Hotspur and England midfielder Dele Alli has been without a club for more than a year despite interest in him. However, a manager who claims to have offered Dele a way back into the game has suggested that the 30-year-old needs to lower his expectations about the level at which he can play.

The Milton Keynes-born star was still a teenager when he left hometown club MK Dons - then in League One - for Spurs in 2015. He spent the next decade playing top-flight football, most recently on a short-term deal with Serie A side Como.

He has played just 29 competitive games since leaving Spurs in January 2022, with injury and addiction impacting his career. Just one of those matches came in a Como shirt and came to an early end when he was sent off on his debut.

Karl Robinson gave Dele his senior debut with the Dons and claims to have offered the midfielder a contract with Salford City when in charge of the EFL side last term. Robinson recognised that the self-belief that got the player to the highest level will make him think he can still thrive in the highest echelons of the game, but suggested Dele may need to swallow his pride and return to a lower level of the sport.

Make sure you never miss the latest Tottenham news and opinion by making Football London one of your Google preferred sources.

"If a job comes up, Dele Alli is always more than welcome to come anywhere I go, if he wants to," Robinson said on No Tippy Tappy Football. "All I can say is that I hope he’s well, I hope he’s healthy, and I hope he’s in a good place.

“If he ticks all those boxes, I don’t care about whether he’s a footballer; I worry about Dele as a young man – he is someone that I will always be there to pick up the phone to.

“I would 100% give him a chance. I saw him in the gym in June, and I told him to come to Salford. But he probably looked at me and went, ‘gaffer, come on, I’m not doing that.’"

FOLLOW OUR TOTTENHAM FB PAGE! Latest Spurs news, analysis and much more via our dedicated Facebook page

At his peak, Dele enjoyed an 18-goal Premier League season when Tottenham finished second behind Chelsea in the 2016/17 campaign. He also scored three goals in 37 senior England appearances, including a memorable effort against Sweden at the 2018 World Cup.

However, he hasn't scored a goal of any kind since January 2023, when he netted for Besiktas against Alanyaspor. Robinson recognised it was mentality that helped get him to the top, but that same mentality might leave him thinking he can still make a difference at the highest level.

“The reason why these players become these players is because they’ve got self-belief," the manager added. "I guarantee if you sat down with him now, he’d probably say he could change the fortune at Manchester United - because that’s how top players who produce moments of magic think. When this boy left MK Dons at 18 to go to Spurs, he was getting compared to Lionel Messi, David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane, James Rodriguez.

"To see his rise with the national team and with Spurs, and looking to where he is now – and I hope he listens to this – I don’t know why he’s not playing football. He is a tremendous young man who has come through a lot of situations that he’s struggled through, but he’s risen above it to become the person he is.”