The rapid elevation of Dele Alli from League One to England honours is either a fantastic achievement or recklessly hasty.
Considering Dele was playing league one football last season and has only a handful of Premiership games under his belt, it is clearly a massive statement on the part of Roy Hodgson and though Alli is clearly a fantastic player in the making, it also shows a real worry that as a national side, we are currently desperately short on experienced and quality options to choose from.
I actually hope and almost believe that the death of talent is beginning to show signs of improvement, but we still need the bigger clubs to gamble and play the kids and not tease us and let them stagnate. Players such as Ruben Loftus-Cheek needs Chelsea to give him serious minutes or at least loan him to a club that will let him develop. Spurs and a limited few, such as Southampton and leading the way in bringing through kids and so far to great effect.
I get the impression that Alli is a well grounded and mature young man, but is there still a need to have these players do their time and work through the ranks? Alli has only just broken into the U21 ranks and perhaps the sensible thinking is to leave him there to establish himself and then rethink things after next summers senior European Championship and he also has another 30 senior appearances for Spurs.
Does the old saying of if you are good enough, you are old enough apply here. Alli is a big lad, who is already fast approaching a hundred senior games and has made the step up from the third to top tier, with consulate ease. Can he do the same for England if called upon?
There is a feeling that he is called up, merely to get a taste of whats to come and to gain further experience. If thats the case, I applaud Hodgson for this foresight and it was something I regularly suggested for our brightest young things when I wrote for Vital England a while back. If however that was the case, would it have been wiser to do it without the fanfare and just invite him and one or two others along without the extra hype of an official call up?
I also ask the question of if we call up Dele, why not Eric? For me, Dier is currently more deserving of senior recognition, but as a positive, I hope he gets more chance to rest as the U21s only have the one game against Kazakhstan, as opposed to the seniors two…
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