Ben Davies has revealed his early memories of former Tottenham team-mate Dele Alli after his transfer from MK Dons in 2015.
After impressing for the League One outfit with his tough-tackling and lung-busting midfield prowess, Spurs parted with just £5million for the then-teenage star before he rose to stardom under Mauricio Pochettino.
Despite his off-field issues that have continued to stand in the way of the clearly talented midfielder, Wales international Davies recently spoke to French journalist Julien Laurens regarding his first impressions of the now-Everton man.
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“Dele was incredible when he turned up, he was a young kid from Milton Keynes and he got thrown into first-team training and he would just do stuff for fun," began the 30-year-old. «I think to start with, the management, the staff were like ‘What’s this kid doing?’
“[They would say] like play properly, get the ball and play here. He would just get the ball to feet, step over it, and try to go through other people’s legs, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Trying to flick the ball and at this time I remember he was playing as a six. He was a CDM, he would fly into tackles and you’d get some boys be like ‘relax’.
“Then it would come to pre-season and we played against Real Madrid and it would be like the Dele Show. From that he was just a kid who there was no level of competition, that was the best way to describe him. What he did in League One he would try against [Luka] Modric, against [Toni] Kroos, It was so irrelevant to who he was playing against.”
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