Antonio Conte has played down the chances of Dele Alli coming back to haunt Tottenham on Monday, saying players normally “go down, not up” when they stop working with him.
Dele is expected to get a rousing reception when he returns to Spurs with new club Everton, five weeks after his deadline-day move in January.
Spurs allowed Dele to join the Toffees on an initial free transfer, although the deal could eventually be worth as much as £40million, and it remains to be seen if they will live to regret offloading the midfielder, who was once rated as one of the finest young players in Europe.
Conte, however, says he cannot remember a single one of his former players making him pay for selling them and suggested he had given Dele every chance to prove himself.
“I don’t remember a player that when he went away, came back with a great spirit of revenge,” Conte said.
“Honestly, I don’t remember one. During my coaching, I always try to be honest with the players and give all the players the possibility to show me that they deserve to play. I don’t remember a player that had their revenge with me. What happens usually is that when players went away they went down, not up.”
Dele won back-to-back PFA Young Player of the Year awards, established himself as a key part of the England squad and was described as the best 21-year-old in the world by Mauricio Pochettino.
But his career has been in decline for over three years and he was dropped from match-day squads by Conte and the Italian’s predecessors, Nuno Espirito Santo and Jose Mourinho.
Asked why Dele’s career had gone downhill, Conte said he still had time to rediscover his form.
“It is difficult to say something about this, for sure he is still young and his career is in his hands. He is very young and he has all the time to take his career again,” Conte said. “I really think so.”
The Spurs head coach added: “[Dele joining Everton] was a good decision for the player and the club. This decision was the best for the player because in the last few years he wasn’t playing regularly and I think it was good for him to go to another environment to challenge for himself.
“I can tell you that in the period that we were working together I tried to get the best out of him and he was always involved in the training session. But in the end it was a good decision for him and he deserves big respect for what he did for this club in the time that he played here.”
