Dele Alli has come clean on talks he held with Brendan Rodgers over a move to Liverpool – only for the Reds to pull out of the deal.
The midfielder initially made a name for himself with boyhood club MK Dons. His performances for the side garnered admiring glances from Premier League clubs.
Liverpool were among the sides interested in a move for Dele. Speaking on Sky Sports, the 28-year-old admitted that he had discussions with then Reds boss Rodgers after a goalscoring display against Coventry.
He said: “So after the game, Liverpool would play in West Ham, I think in London. And then I went to meet Brendan Rodgers after that game, the night before the Liverpool game, and we had a conversation but it never happened. I felt at that time I was ready to take the next step.”
A move to Anfield failed to materialise, with Tottenham instead sealing a £5m deal. Dele returned to MK Dons on loan to seal promotion before going on to be a huge success in North London.
Ironically, he now finds himself on Merseyside having joined Everton in 2022. Former Liverpool boss Rodgers has also revealed how close the Reds were to signing the midfielder.
Speaking in 2016, the Northern Irishman said: “We thought we had him at Liverpool. The manager of MK Dons actually drove him down to us. They played a game on the Saturday and we were playing West Ham on the Sunday.
“We’d had contact with Dele, it was all above board, I was speaking with Karl Robinson and I spoke to Dele and his adoptive parents. Karl did really well with him and he came to me and said, ‘I’ve got a really exciting player, I’d love to see him at Liverpool’.
“I spent a couple of hours in a hotel room with him and he wanted to come to Liverpool. It was all about getting the deal done with the club but unfortunately it never got done.
“On Saturday evening we thought it had got done but eventually he went to Tottenham, which was frustrating and disappointing. He’s done really well there.”
While neither Dele nor Rodgers have revealed exactly why his move to Merseyside fell apart, former Liverpool chief executive officer Ian Ayre has previously hinted that it was to do with the fee that MK Dons were demanding. Speaking in 2017, he said: “There was interest in the player, but where it got to was that the demands at that time were not fitting to what he had achieved at that point.
“We didn’t feel the player matched that demand. It’s easy to sit and say: ‘Look what you could have bought,’ but how many players could you apply the reverse of that to? That’s the truth.”
