Ten months ago, at the bottom of one of the weirdest and most precipitous slumps in 21st-century sport, the golfer Jordan Spieth was asked: what was the one thing that he would tell his younger self? Spieth could have given a glib top-of-the-head response, but from the way he looked wistfully into the mid-distance, it was clear that he was rummaging in his soul for the real answer.
“Honestly, I wish I played with the mentality I had back then,” he replied with a dry chuckle. “You overthink the game the more you’re out [on the course], and you just want to play like a kid, free-wheel it and have fun. I’d tell myself . . . try to hit the cart-picker on the range, try to hit that flop-slice five-iron . . .just don’t take it too seriously. I didn’t back then.”
The story of Spieth has some interesting things to tell us about fun and talent, two things which are not the same but are perhaps more closely intertwined than we imagine. When Spieth won three majors before his 24th birthday, the easy explanation to reach for was talent: sheer ability begetting success in a simple equation.
But no sensible theory of talent would pretend that Spieth has become less talented over the past four years. Yet he undeniably became a lesser player. So what happened? Was he overtaken by an avalanche of younger, more gifted players? Perhaps, but Spieth’s own, heartfelt explanation is that he was more effective when his game was animated by that childlike sense of enjoyment.
Fun: it is one of the most elusive and underrated qualities in sport, and probably the hardest thing to preserve or recapture. Recreational sport is fun. Sport is never more fun than when you’re a brilliant youngster, exploring the outer limits of your talent, trying to hit the cart-picker on the range.
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But professional sport is, by nature, a grind: something endlessly drilled, dissected, rehearsed, repeated; irradiated with intense pressure and media scrutiny. Some athletes manage the transition better than others, towards a more businesslike compact with the game they play. But what if the fun — that free-wheeling, exuberant quality — was the thing that made you great?
I’ve been thinking about Dele Alli this week. Everyone else is thinking about Mason Mount, about Phil Foden, about Jude Bellingham and how brilliantly he would fill one of the spots in England’s midfield. It’s a measure of how far Dele has fallen that there is scant mention of a player who, before he turned 23, scored 36 goals in his first three Premier League seasons and netted the clincher in a World Cup quarter-final. Barring an injury crisis, he is certain to miss out on England’s squad.
Elite football is a million miles from the sport we play for pleasure. The game itself is unrecognisable, the pressure is unimaginable, the physical slog is remorseless and the lifestyle is crushingly repetitive. Preserving a kernel of fun at the heart of the enterprise is like catching lightning in a bottle of isotonic recovery drink, but because footballers are humans and humans tend to perform best when they are happy and enthused, it can also be extremely important.
Of all the teams I’ve watched, I think Tottenham Hotspur under Mauricio Pochettino — especially in those first three seasons — came closest to capturing the basic, universal joy of playing football with your friends. It was a perfect storm of low expectations and little pressure, good vibes and goofy handshakes, young, unjaded players revelling in the discovery of each other’s talent and a charismatic manager who charged everything with excitement. And no one flourished more in this environment than Dele, who went from teenage prospect to elite player in a whirl of self-expression and enjoyment.
Or think of the last time Dele was really good: England’s 2018 World Cup run. World Cup campaigns are not usually fun, least of all England’s. But somehow, this one was: the Love Train, unicorn lilos, Southgate’s waistcoat and all that. And Dele, at the centre of it, was clearly having a blast, celebrating his goal against Sweden with a ride-the-pony dance, and even “flossing” in his official World Cup portrait.
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One thing we know about Dele: this is who he is. Most brilliant young footballers crackle with a certain joie de vivre; with Dele, effervescence is an innate part of his personality. On the pitch, at his best, he’s a showboat, a mischief-maker. In Tottenham’s Amazon Prime documentary, he’s shown ranking his favourite chocolate bars, and comes across as an agreeably puckish presence in a sport saturated with seriousness.
It’s fascinating to reflect on the words of Karl Robinson, the coach who first unlocked the Dele magic at MK Dons. “He just had a love for football, he played like he was free,” Robinson told The Athletic last year. “The industry didn’t suffocate his talent or his imagination. It was so refreshing to see a young man really enjoying his trade. There would be times when I’d see the ball go through my legs, hear a chuckle from five yards away and it would be him trying to nutmeg me.”
Some talk about Dele’s decline has lingered on the idea that he needs a straitened tactical role. But equally relevant, I think, is that he thrives in a particular emotional key. It’s not hard to see why the past three years may have sapped his zest. There was the gradual souring of the Pochettino project. Being publicly admonished by José Mourinho in that documentary for being “f***ing lazy”. Getting burgled at knifepoint in May. And can you imagine a less fun place to play football than Tottenham right now, a club plagued by dark whispers and stultifying defensive tactics?
There are two ways of looking at this. Mental resilience, the ability to ride the waves of circumstance, is part of sport. You could look at Dele’s withering, alongside the robust bloom of Harry Kane and Son Heung-min, and shruggingly conclude that some plants are more suited to the harsh climate than others.
Or you could look at the climate itself. Football is a joy-free zone at the moment. The schedule is punishing. The games are played in soulless concrete bowls. The playful celebrations have largely disappeared. The players have to wade through a corrosive tide of abuse on social media. The hot-take culture is out of control, turning each and every performance into a bitter referendum. The next World Cup is in Qatar. The new Champions League format is a trudge. Will England’s next fantasista stand a better chance of retaining their sense of fun?
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I don’t know if we will see that brilliant version of Dele again, the player who dominated big games and looked destined to take on the world. I do know that I’d like to see the player who radiated sheer enjoyment. Those incarnations were, after all, one and the same.
