Everton have released a statement supporting midfielder Dele Alli following his interview with Gary Neville on The Overlap.
During the 43-minute interview, Dele candidly expresses the issues he has faced throughout his life. From being molested by his mum's friend aged six, to starting smoking while seven and then selling drugs just a year later, Dele emotionally details everything he had to deal with.
The 27-year-old also revealed he spent a period of this summer in rehabilitation in order to deal with a sleeping pill addiction. He is also currently recovering from a hip injury that prematurely cut his loan spell at Besiktas in Turkey short.
Everton have offered their full support to Dele, with the midfielder also highlighting how manager Sean Dyche has been helping, too.
Everton said: "The club has been supporting Dele in both his return to fitness and overcoming the personal challenges highlighted in his interview with The Overlap
"Everyone at Everton respects and applauds Dele’s bravery to speak about the difficulties he has faced, as well as seek the help required.
"The physical and mental welfare of all our players is of paramount importance.
"The club takes very seriously its responsibility in protecting the confidentiality of players and staff. Dele will not be conducting any further interviews in relation to his rehabilitation, and we ask that his privacy is respected while he continues his recuperation from injury and receives the full care and support needed for his physical and mental wellbeing."
During the interview, prior to Everton's statement, Dele expressed his gratitude for the assistance Everton have provided.
“Everton were amazing about it, they were always supportive of me 100 per cent and I’ll be grateful to them forever," Dele said. "Whatever happens in the future, for them to be so open, honest and understanding, I couldn’t have asked for anything more in that time when I was probably making the biggest decision of my life, something I was scared to do.
“But I was happy I done it and to be honest, I couldn’t have expected it to go the way it did. Before you hear about it, it has its own stigma. It’s something people don’t want to do, going into rehab, it definitely sounds scary.
“But I could never have imagined how much I would get from it and how much it helped me mentally because I was in a bad place. I got out three weeks ago. If I’m being honest I probably wouldn’t have wanted to talk about it this soon but I’m in a really good place to talk about this now.”
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