Dele Alli praised Mauricio Pochettino for caring about him as a person, as he opened up to Gary Neville in an emotional interview. The former Tottenham Hotspur star discussed the profound challenges he endured throughout his childhood and the long-lasting effects of trauma on his football career as he spoke on a powerful episode of The Overlap. “Mauricio Pochettino was the best manager and I couldn’t have asked for a better manager at the time,” Alli, 27, said of his time at Spurs. “It wasn’t like a footballer and a manager relationship. It was deeper than that, I felt. He was just so understanding of the decisions I was making, and he was guiding. He cared about me as a person before the football, which is what I needed at that time.”