Where did it go wrong? A young Dele Alli likened to Yaya Toure & Mousa Dembele as former Tottenham star remains without a club & stuck in free agency

Before his Premier League fame, a teenage Dele Alli dominated academy football at MK Dons. Former defender Jordan Buck recalls Alli’s extraordinary physical and technical power, comparing his style to the most elite engines in the league’s history rather than a typical winger.

Speaking exclusively to talkSPORT, Buck noted: “He was so skinny, but he just used to just glide past people. This was just a tall frame, just knows when to touch the ball, when to shift his body. And he just cut through players. Like the way Mousa Dembele and Yaya Toure used to drive past players, not like an Eden Hazard or a Mohamed Salah. He’d drop so deep, get the ball directly from the keeper and just glide through from his box, through the midfield, and then he’s finding a pass in the final third.”