Not even 24 hours after the golden boy of English football had been crowned PFA Young Player of the Year, Dele Alli was showing the entire football world the sheer evil that lurks behind his cheeky grin and playful wave.
With his Tottenham side struggling to overcome West Brom at White Hart Lane, Alli drew gasps from the shocked crowd as he plunged a vicious right fist into the torso of Claudio Yacob, almost certainly intending to shatter the Argentine’s ribs into thousands of pieces.
The FA were quick to react to what will surely go down as one of the most unsavoury moments ever witnessed on an English football field, charging the 20-year-old with violent conduct the next day and possibly ending his season prematurely. Some might say that such a malicious, brutal act might warrant a longer, much more severe punishment – possibly even a jail sentence.
While Yacob will have spent the night writhing in agony and spluttering blood well into the small hours of the morning as a result of Alli’s frenzied attack, the real damage will be felt on playgrounds up and down the land in the weeks and months to come.
Widely regarded as a role model for many youngsters before the incident, the former MK Dons star’s actions have essentially given the message to primary school children as young as five that it’s ‘cool’ to go and beat your opponents to a pulp when they’re having a kick-about on the yard at play time.
Worse still, it effectively gives them the green light to go and kick lumps out of their pets, siblings, parents, teachers, lollipop ladies… you name it – nobody in society is safe.
Make no mistake about it, such an act of thuggery could make Dele Alli as much of an issue for the young people of today as alcopops were to the children of the nineties and as Grand Theft Auto was to the children of the noughties.
With his once squeaky-clean reputation now blown to smithereens, let’s pray for the sake of the next generation that Alli can conduct himself both on and off the field like some of the other, consummate professionals of the modern game… Jamie Vardy, for example.
Or perhaps every one should just calm down a bit and realise that it wasn’t actually very violent at all? Maybe we should accept that football in England has become soft, petty and obsessed with punishing minor incidents such as this one instead of addressing the more serious matters.
