Dele Alli's new Twitch career: Is forgotten ex-Tottenham star's pivot to livestreaming a viable alternative to football or cause for concern?

When you think about Tottenham's fierce modern rivalry with Chelsea, Dele is one of the first players who comes to mind - and for good reason, having been the protagonist of some famous victories over the Blues during the Mauricio Pochettino era. It was a fixture that brought out the best in him.

The prickly midfielder had an exceptional record against Spurs' fierce rivals from west London, coming up clutch with eight goal contributions in as many games during his time at the club, including a match-winning brace at White Hart Lane in 2016-17 and a goal and assist on home soil in 2018-19.

However, it was in April 2018 that he cemented his status as a potential Tottenham legend, delivering what was remarkably their first victory at Stamford Bridge in the Premier League era. Dele inspired a Spurs fightback to end their 28-year hoodoo on Chelsea's home turf, first showing wonderful control to bring down a ball over the top and finish to put his side in front, before pouncing on a goalmouth scramble to seal a historic victory.

The then-22-year-old looked like a nailed-on superstar at the time, finishing the season with a ridiculous 30 goal contributions in 50 appearances in all competitions. That followed an even more productive 2017-18 campaign, and he seemed to be justifying comparisons to the likes of Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard.

He later admitted that, at the time, the rivalry with Chelsea felt even more fierce than the one Tottenham share with north London foes Arsenal. "I don't know why but during my time at Tottenham I felt like Arsenal and Tottenham always had the rivalry, but the Chelsea vs Tottenham thing, that became more personal," he told Sky Sports in 2024. "We always wanted to beat them and we had the 'Battle of the Bridge' and games like that. I think the dynamic changed and we weren’t concentrating on Arsenal as much, it was more Chelsea."

Dele's fortunes would gradually deteriorate following Pochettino's sacking in November 2019, with injury problems and middling form causing him to slide completely out of favour as a succession of managers - including Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte - passed through what became a revolving door at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, before he was allowed to join Everton on a free transfer in January 2022.

In May 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 lockdown, Dele was held at knifepoint and physically assaulted in his own home in north London during a burglary. Tottenham fan and journalist Sean Walsh believes that was a watershed moment in his career. "I don't think he ever got over it," he tells GOAL. "In Project Restart we barely saw him, he didn't really play. Then 2020-21, that whole season basically he's just a non-factor, he's not there, he's not playing. It was a slippery slope and he just never got back into it."

Throughout his career, Dele had been battling demons as well as form and fitness. In a candid interview with Gary Neville on The Overlap in the summer of 2023, he shed light on the trauma of his childhood, revealing that he had been sexually abused aged six and had been exploited to deal drugs by the age of eight.

He also opened up about his mental health issues and an addiction to sleeping pills, which led him to spend six weeks in a rehabilitation centre earlier that year following his injury-impacted loan spell at Besiktas. It was around that time that photos were published that appeared to show Dele inhaling laughing gas. Earlier this year, the Daily Mail reported that he had lost £150,000 "in a matter of days" in late-night card games at a London casino.

"Don't get me wrong," he told Neville. "I love football, it saved my life, I owe everything to football. But it's not just as easy as everyone thinks it is. It's not this 'high life'. Yes, you have money, you can do a lot of things that you wouldn't be able to do without it. But mentally, I don't think people will ever understand until you're in it, what it can do to you."

On his return to England, Dele was sidelined by a series of injuries for an agonising 18 months, missing the entire 2023-24 campaign. Despite his contract ending in the summer of 2024, he worked his way back to fitness with the help of Everton's medical staff before securing a free transfer to Como in January 2025.

However, the England international has been without a club since leaving the Serie A side by mutual consent in September 2025, shortly after his split from girlfriend Cindy Kimberly, where he infamously made just one nine-minute cameo before being sent off for a reckless foul on AC Milan's Ruben Loftus-Cheek.

That remains his most recent competitive appearance at the time of writing, 19 long months ago. Since leaving Tottenham midway through 2021-22, Dele has only featured in 29 matches. Thirteen of those came at Everton, another 15 on loan at Besiktas, and then the solitary appearance for Como.

Dele has spent the past year training independently, sharing semi-regular updates on social media, and two transfer windows have now passed without him finding a new club. At this stage it's unclear where, when or even whether his playing career will resume. Finding himself with lots of free time on his hands, he has turned to streaming on Twitch. It's a move that has divided opinion.

Since launching his Twitch channel in late September, Dele has tried his hand at both 'IRL' streaming, which stands for 'in real life' and literally shows him going about his day to day, as well as sitting at a desk in his London home and engaging with a chatroom, quickly racking up more than 150,000 followers. The videos aren't short, either, with his longest chat stream to date lasting almost five hours.

Broadcasting to the world from in front of shelves packed full of trainers and designer bags, the 30-year-old's content so far has certainly been varied, including anecdotes from his football career, watchalongs of clips of his goals on YouTube, impromptu special guests, plenty of music and even cold calls to random people in his star-studded contacts list, including Jack Grealish, James Maddison and Eric Dier.

It was one of those calls that generated an uncomfortable, somewhat cringeworthy exchange that has since gone viral. Egged on by his viewers, Dele rings his former Tottenham co-star Harry Kane, but their conversation only really served to highlight the different trajectories their respective careers have followed since their paths diverged. "What's going on? I've not spoken to you for a while, mate," Kane says after picking up.

Dele informs the Bayern Munich striker that he's livestreaming before beaming back: "There was a lot of requests for you. And they've [the chat] been saying 'Ballon d'Or', and I've been saying 'it has to go to one man and one man only'."

However, Kane - clearly uncomfortable with the fact that thousands of people are eavesdropping on the conversation - swiftly moves the conversation back onto his former team-mate, perhaps concerned for his welfare. Tellingly, the England captain doesn't seem to know Dele is living in London, asking "Where you at?" and seemingly trying to motivate him by saying "Working hard, I hope?" When discussing his own life, Dele's tone noticeably shifts to become more serious.

It's unclear exactly how much money, if any, Dele is making through his new outlet. Streamers can monetise Twitch through enhanced subscriptions, in-stream ads, sponsorship deals and random donations from viewers.

The reception to Dele's career pivot has been largely negative. Many online have expressed concern for the former Tottenham man's mental wellbeing, with the perception that he is behaving somewhat out of character when he is broadcasting. It should be noted that this kind of public access to footballers at any level is pretty unprecedented, and we never really see their true personalities through media-trained interviews and social media clips.

The Daily Mail described Dele's streaming as "the sad reality" of his exile from football, while the Mirror labelled his exploits "hauntingly absurd" and "utterly bleak". Speaking on talkSPORT, pundit and commentator Ally McCoist said: "That's great, and it's fun and it's good to watch and listen to. But if you're talking about where he is at the moment in time, it's tragic. That's the biggest picture. Because he should still be playing at a level that we're talking about him on a Monday morning."

However, McCoist did caveat that by pointing to the midfielder's struggles with his mental health and addiction. "The bottom line is, if he can't do that because it affects his mental health, then he's in a far better place where he is at the moment. And he's come out and spoken about his troubles with mental health. So his welfare and his well-being is far more important, I think, than playing football at the top level."

Meanwhile, an unnamed former England international told the Daily Mail: "I couldn't watch the videos. I felt sorry for him. It made me feel really sad that it's come to this. For his ability it made me feel: 'Wow, is this where it's come to?' I feel sorry that football has left him behind."

Dele felt compelled to defend his new venture live on a stream as a result. "I could finish all of that [training] by five o'clock, come back, do recovery and be on stream by six. You can't have fun as well? And then if I go [out] to a club then it's a problem also," he said to his viewers with a disbelieving laugh. "I just saw it and I'm just like, guys, you can do more than one thing. What, they just do talkSPORT and then go home and do what?

"I haven't got anything against talkSPORT, by the way, it was just their comments I saw about me streaming, as if I'm never going back to playing football again."

For Tottenham fans, some of the clips from Dele's streams have made for particularly tough viewing. "It's hard to watch some of these clips. It doesn't seem right, he might even be happy, but he doesn't seem in the right headspace," Tottenham supporter Walsh tells GOAL.

"The call with Kane, it did seem like they hadn't spoken in a while, and my inkling is that when Kane sees a call from Dele, I reckon he thought it was almost like a cry for help. I think if he [Kane] knew he was streaming, he wouldn't have picked up the phone."

He adds: "Really tough, and yeah, I didn't see his career panning out this way, I was so convinced he'd be playing for Real Madrid or something."

However, Walsh also points to the fact that Dele has a long history of internet streaming and engaging with his legion of fans, even during his peak years at Tottenham. "Dele and streaming, he was doing that even when he was in his prime at Spurs," he says. "I remember, he would stream Fortnite in the week. He's from that kind of generation. I think that even if he was still good today, he would probably still be doing it, he would kind of be the person who would interact with fans.

"He was like catnip for little kids when he was in his prime. Everyone wanted to be him. I remember my younger brother just loved him, idolised him. Cheeky chappy, gets the big goals, loves to wind up the opposition. That was a massive thing, kind of felt like the centre of the universe sometimes."

Walsh believes it's not the livestreaming itself that is the problem, but rather the content of some of the videos and those in Dele's inner circle who might be influencing his decision-making. "I think he was always going to have this outside interest, but that's not the problem for me, it's who are the people in his corner?," he says.

"The livestreaming isn't the problem for me. It's more like the stuff that he's saying and doing on it. And just like, like kind of cold calling Kane and things like that. It's just kind of weird behaviour."

For what it's worth, Spurs are seemingly still in Dele's corner. He was a special guest at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for the north London derby against Arsenal back in February, and he was given permission to use their training base to work on his fitness the following month.

He even returned to the club's home ground on a stream earlier in October where he was collaborating with YouTuber Danny Aarons, meeting fans and doing a tour of the stadium before climbing onto the roof.

"Spurs have been very keen to extend an olive branch to people from that generation of Spurs," Walsh tells GOAL. "They [the owners] wanted to rebuild a connection with the fans. They recognise that the fans love that team, basically. So they'll do what they can to promote the people in that team, Dele included.

"He was training at the training ground last season. I think the door's kind of almost always open for him and that generation of players to come back. They want to build a culture basically, and they want it to be built on that version of Spurs."

It remains unclear what the next chapter holds for Dele at this stage, and whether or not livestreaming on Twitch will become a viable new career. He hasn't streamed for almost two weeks, and on his call to Kane he suggested he has something in the works, saying "I've got some things happening", while he has also mentioned a "project" in other videos.

Despite his hours spent livestreaming over the past month or so (more than 20 in total), you can't argue that Dele isn't working hard. He regularly shares photos of himself in the gym and on the training pitch on social media and still appears to be in good shape as we await his return to the pitch. On one stream he claims he trains five or six times per week.

Where he ends up next is anyone's guess. Having reportedly trained with West Ham in the summer, the midfielder has been offered the chance to link up with his local club Barnet, who are in League Two, having already rented their facilities. Speaking recently, their manager Dean Brennan said "the doors are open" for him to work with the first team to build his fitness. However, the Daily Mail has reported that Dele won't take up the offer as he waits for "the right opportunity". He's also used the pitch at eighth-tier Windsor & Eton FC to train.

Speaking on Boyle Sports' 'No Tippy Tappy Football' podcast, Karl Robinson - the manager who oversaw Dele's breakthrough at MK Dons - revealed he had offered the 30-year-old the chance to join Salford City earlier this year. "If a job comes up, Dele Alli is always more than welcome to come anywhere I go, if he wants to," he said. "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. 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'."

Walsh believes dropping down to the fourth tier of the Football League would actually be the best move for Dele's football career right now. "He could probably do a job in the Championship," he tells GOAL. "But I think if he actually really kind of wanted to prove that he still cares about football, going into League Two would actually be kind of a good PR move."

Who knows what the future holds, but we might need to tune in to Dele's next livestream to find out.