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For a long time, Liverpool’s failure to sign Dele Alli was a source of frustration and regret.
A few years ago, the young Red revealed that he visited Liverpool’s training facility in 2014, shortly after bursting onto the scene as a sheltered teenager at MK Dons.
Shortly after, at just 18 years old, he established himself as a serious, dazzling talent when the League One team beat Louis Van Gaal’s Manchester United 4-0 in the League Cup. A few months later he signed for Tottenham.
“At the time I was in MK, there was contact with Liverpool before I signed for Tottenham, but that was even before we spoke with Tottenham.” told Football Focus in 2016 . “I think it was six months before.
“We went up there and I think they knew Steven Gerrard was my hero so they said he was going to come down and get me, but when I got there he was apparently asleep.
“I think he had a game the next day so I get it.”
The story may have become apocryphal, and there was almost certainly more than the ill-timed afternoon nap of the legendary Liverpool captain, but the club’s failure to get Alli’s signature became a sore point.
He took up top-level football instantly when he joined Spurs in the summer of 2015, and immediately seemed like an indispensable member of Mauricio Pochettino’s first team squad.
Alli scored 10 goals and recorded nine more assists in his debut season in the Premier League, the 2015-16 campaign. Liverpool meanwhile have been hard at work in the final months of Brendan Rodgers’ tenure and similarly, inconsistently as Jurgen Klopp took the time to change the results.
Liverpool finished that season in eighth place, unthinkable behind West Ham and Southampton, and ten points behind Spurs, third.
Alli was named PFA Young Player of the Year that season, as the Spurs looked like a true challenger to the Leicester City title before finally walking away. The teenager’s rapid rise was just one example of how Tottenham was beating Liverpool in terms of recruiting.
Liverpool improved a lot in Klopp’s first full season when he began to instill his ideas as the Reds returned to the top four in 2016/17, but Alli also continued on an upward trajectory, scoring 18 Premier League goals as Spurs, who finished runner-up to Antonio Conte’s Chelsea – once again enjoyed a 10-point lead over Liverpool at the final table.
Then established as one of the mainstays of Gareth Southgate’s new England team, he looked like a genuinely generational talent with a reputation not unlike Jadon Sancho at Borussia Dortmund today.
Given his performance and importance to a Tottenham side that had become a Champions League regular for the first time in the Premier League era, it is impossible to argue that Liverpool could not have done it with his services. In a moment, but not anymore.
Considering how he had emphatically surpassed and assisted Philippe Coutinho during the two and a half seasons they both participated in the same league, a different coach or a different sporting director might even have considered a bold move for Alli as a direct replacement for Coutinho in January 2018 after his Brazilian talisman moved to Barcelona for £ 105 million, which is still Liverpool’s record sale.
The years since have shown that Liverpool took the right path by forgetting to replace Coutinho with another playmaker; he has not needed it as he has enjoyed one of the most dominant and successful periods in the club’s history.
By reinvesting Coutinho’s money in more urgent areas (Virgil van Dijk and Alisson proved to be revelations on defense and on the net, respectively), Liverpool became the winning force in the Champions League, Premier League champion, 196 points in two seasons that is today.
There was a time when Liverpool fans could have agonized thinking ‘what if?’ for failing to land Alli, but few if any have had such thoughts in the past two years, especially since her individual form has moved in the opposite direction altogether.
In the last two Premier League, the Spurs man has recorded 13 goals and seven assists, less than half in both respects of what he achieved in his first two electric years at the club.
Few matches have typified their divergent paths as the 2019 Champions League final. There was a time when Alli would have been a potential game changer, but he did little to upset Klopp’s men at the Wanda Metropolitano that night, fighting for forging an opening even when the Spurs spent long periods dominating possession and territory.
Now off the scene when it comes to England and struggling to regain his form with Jose Mourinho, Tottenham reportedly made him available for transfer.
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He is still only 24 years old and may be paying the price for playing too much, too soon, having racked up thousands of minutes in high-level football before he turns 21.
Kevin De Bruyne, Mohamed Salah and Romelu Lukaku can serve as inspiration to forge a successful and high-level career after being frozen by Mourinho and a new challenge and a new environment might be the best for him, but it won’t be at Anfield.
For a long time, Liverpool would have used the opportunity to correct their failure to sign Alli. The fact that it is no longer necessary shows how far they have come.
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