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A standing ovation sounds strange in a nearly empty stadium, but Dele Alli received the closest possible approximation of enthusiastic applause under the circumstances when he was substituted at the end of this comfortable Spurs victory.
It may have been a routine victory for Tottenham to seal an 8-1 aggregate win over the modest Austrian side, but Alli was overwhelmed by redemption, who came close to leaving the club last month before making amends with José Mourinho.
The English midfielder, who is still 24 years old, showed enough to suggest that he can regain the form that once made him one of the most exciting young players in Europe. He opened the scoring with a spectacular aerial kick, set goals for Carlos Vinicius and Gareth Bale, and provided a display of action that earned him the applause of his colleagues and his coach.
“To have Dele back at this level is incredible,” said Mourinho.
“I don’t need to talk about his goal, because everyone saw it. For me, the globality of the performance is what matters. He played very well in all aspects of the game.
“Of course he’s not fresh, you can feel his performance going down, which is normal due to injury and not training for a long time.”
Not only was Alli’s performance a personal triumph for a player who has been through a torrid time lately, but he was also very popular with his teammates. The celebrations that followed his goal outweighed the significance of a goal that simply emphasized how little danger there was of a surprise, with Tottenham already leading 4-1 from the first leg in Austria.
Alli had scored twice in this competition before, but nothing was as sumptuous as his shot in the 10th minute. It was a perfect reminder of his shooting ability, and then he showed that he can still play as a supplier, too, creating goals. His precise cross five minutes into the second half gave Vinicius a simple header to make it 2-0 and shortly after Bale replaced Erik Lamela, Alli left the ball for the Welshman to sweep Tottenham’s third.
Vinicius made up for an earlier failure by shooting home his second and Tottenham’s fourth late in the game to seal his way into the knockout stages of this competition.
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