Dele Alli and Gary Neville break down in tears during Overlap interview

"One morning I woke up. I had to go to training, this is when he’d [Mourinho] stopped playing me," Dele explained. "I remember just looking in the mirror. I mean it sounds dramatic, but I was literally just staring in the mirror and I was asking if I could retire now at 24? You know, doing the thing I love.

"For me that was heartbreaking." [caption id="attachment_290151" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Dele has struggled to reignite his career since he left Tottenham Hotspur (Photo by George Wood/Getty Images)[/caption]

Dele opens up about his traumatic childhood

Dele also opened up about his traumatic childhood, stating that this is where a lot of his problems stemmed from. In a very emotional moment of the interview, Dele struggled to talk about the issues but bravely told Neville what had happened to him. "So, at six, I was molested by my mum's friend, who was at the house a lot. My mum was an alcoholic, and that happened at six. I was sent to Africa to learn discipline, and then I was sent back," he said as Neville became visibly upset at the revelations. "At seven, I started smoking, eight I started dealing drugs. An older person told me that they wouldn't stop a kid on a bike, so I rode around with my football, and then underneath I'd have the drugs, that was eight. Eleven, I was hung off a bridge by a guy from the next estate, a man." Dele was eventually adopted at the age of 12 and things improved considerably for the footballer. However, rehab has helped him come to terms with his traumatic early childhood which caused a lot of the problems he has faced recently.

Dele says he has his passion for football back

Dele also said his Spurs teammates Eric Dier, Harry Kane, Heung-min Son, Ben Davies and manager Mauricio Pochettino were huge helps to him during his struggles. The Everton player says he is now fully focused on becoming better than he ever was on the pitch, and says he's in a very healthy place at the moment. "I want to be a better player, a better person. I think, like I look back at that and think 'yeah, I've done good', but I'm not satisfied with that. I mean, you can't drive your car looking in the rear-view mirror, you can't hold onto things that happened in the past. "I'm just looking forward and the journey from here is just exciting for me. And I think you can tell that by how passionate I am about it, and I really mean it when I say it, I'm excited and we'll have to see." The full interview between Dele and Gary Neville is an absolute must-watch and you can check it out in full below.

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