Dele Alli: £26m Tottenham star is Europe’s most valuable midfielder

1/5
Tom Collomosse28 January 2016

It took Dele Alli just 26 games for Tottenham to become the most valuable teenager in European football. Before Spurs’ opening fixture of the season, Alli had not played a single match in either of England’s top two divisions. Now, no player in Europe under the age of 20 would command a higher transfer fee, according to a highly-respected football research group.

The Football Observatory are a Swiss-based organisation who work regularly with Fifa, Uefa and several top European clubs. Using a highly-detailed statistical model, they calculated that Alli, 19, would have been worth £26.5million on the open market at the start of 2016.

That means the value of Alli — who cost Spurs £5m when they signed him from Milton Keynes Dons last January before loaning him back — had increased by more than five times since the start of the season.

Since then, that figure is thought to have climbed well above the £30m mark. He has signed a new contract with Tottenham worth about £25,000 per week — double his previous salary — which is designed to keep him at White Hart Lane until the summer of 2021.

Alli has also scored two spectacular, decisive goals: the chest-trap and volley to secure a 1-1 draw at Everton on January 3, followed by last weekend’s strike at Crystal Palace.

Though there are still nearly four months of the season remaining, Alli’s goal at Palace will be hard to beat: a flawless piece of control, a chip over Mile Jedinak and a ferocious volley from the edge of the penalty area that fizzed past Wayne Hennessey and put Tottenham 2-1 ahead late in the game. They won the match 3-1.

The Observatory are considered a reliable source within football by recruitment and analysis teams at clubs when researching potential targets, and they have recognised Alli’s progress.

“We have been monitoring since 2009 to produce these statistics,” said Dr Raffaele Poli, the head of the Football Observatory, who are part of the International Centre for Sports Studies.

“For each player we take into account multiple criteria — the level of the league, his individual performances using game statistics, his age, whether he plays in the national team and at what level and, of course, the length of their contract. We have calculated transfer values for more than 1,500 players taking this into account. We often do assessments of players’ valuations for clubs and agents.”

Alli is top of an impressive list. He is above second-placed Leroy Sane, the Schalke forward who — like Alli — has already won full international honours, and Kingsley Coman, who plays for Bayern Munich and was signed from Juventus last summer on a two-year loan worth £5.4million.

Bayern have the option to sign him for £16.1m at the end of next season but, according to the Observatory, Coman is already worth £17.7m. They believe Sane, who has attracted interest from Manchester City and Liverpool, has a value of £19.7m.

Alli’s performances this season have stunned most in English football but not the team-mates with whom he shared Milton Keynes’ promotion from League One last season.

Defender Lee Hodson, who played alongside Alli during the midfielder’s first full season with Milton Keynes, anticipated Alli’s success at White Hart Lane. He told Standard Sport: “I know a lot of Spurs fans. A few of them had watched Dele at MK and while they thought he was a good player, they didn’t know whether he’d be ready for the Spurs team straightaway.

“But I was telling them from day one he would play in the first team. There is everything there to be a superstar and if he carries on the way he is going, I’m sure he will be. I remember being away with Northern Ireland when he received his first call-up for England. I got in touch and asked him how it felt, training with England. He just said: ‘Yeah, it was good. Just training.’

“Nothing scares him, whether he’s playing for England or Spurs. You need that bit of cockiness and arrogance on the pitch. Dele has it in abundance and he will be a top English player.”

Alli’s goal at Palace was replayed around the world but it was received in far more low-key fashion in the MK dressing room. Hodson added: “Someone might say: ‘Oh, Dele scored again.’

“When we got on the coach after our game on Saturday, someone mentioned Dele’s goal and it was all over social media but it doesn’t surprise us to see him do that. We saw him do that kind of thing in training.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in