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Dele Alli’s former manager has revealed that he offered him the chance to move to League Two with Salford City this summer. The attacking midfielder remains without a club after leaving Italian side Como in the summer of 2025. Dele spent six months with the club after joining on a free transfer the previous January, but made just one appearance. He has now been a free agent for more than a year. dThe 30-year-old came up through the Milton Keynes Dons youth team and played 88 times under the guidance of Karl Robinson. He joined Tottenham in 2015 and burst onto the scene in the Premier League and on the international stage.
As Dele now looks to rebuild his career, Robinson says the player is always welcome to join him. The manager also revealed an offer he made to him in the summer.
“If a job comes up, Dele Alli is always more than welcome to come anywhere I go, if he wants to,” he said, speaking to Boyle Sports and Footy Accumulators’ podcast 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.”
He revealed that he believes that the midfielder will still have the self belief that he can play at the highest level. He used a potential move to Manchester United as an example.
“The reason why these players become these players is because they’ve got self-belief. 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.”
Dele has since seemingly moved into live-streaming on Twitch, where he recently broadcast himself phoning former team-mates, including Jack Grealish, James Maddison and Harry Kane. He also streams his gym workouts and training sessions. After falling out of form at Spurs, Dele joined Everton on a free transfer in January 2022. He spent the 2022/23 season on loan with Beşiktaş before leaving Everton in 2024.