Jose Mourinho says Dele Alli is back to his best after the midfielder put in an amazing display in Spurs’ 4-0 victory over Wolfsberger.
Alli stole the headlines for all of the positive reasons on Wednesday night. He scored a brilliant overhead kick and set up two goals in Tottenham’s 4-0 Europa League win over Wolfsberger.
The out-of-favor man scored a special opener in the 10th minute and then set up both Carlos Vinicius, who added a late second. Gareth Bale then wrapped up the rout as Spurs made it through to the last 16 with an 8-1 aggregate victory over the Austrian side.
It has been a difficult season for Alli, having been frozen out by Mourinho. However, he enjoyed his best night in ages since his gradual re-introduction to the squad.
Wolfsberger might have been the lowest-ranked side left in the Europa League but that didn’t stop Mourinho from praising the 24-year-old.
“The goal I don’t need to speak, because everyone watched it and I believe that all around the world on all these sports TV, people are going to watch it, no need to talk about it,” Mourinho said as per the club’s website.
“But for me the globality of the performance is what matters. He played very well in every aspect of the game, he played very well.
“Of course he’s not fresh, of course you can feel that his performance like in the first leg from minute 55-60 is going to go down, which is normal due to the circumstances – injured, not training for a long time.
“But in this moment when we are going to play every three days, 10 matches in March, to have Dele back at this level is amazing.
“But I wouldn’t say Dele only. (Harry) Winks, (Moussa) Sissoko, just to give two more examples, to have them back to this level, we need more than ever.”