This article is taken from the October 2022 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

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The great George Best once told a now-legendary story. After a successful night gambling at a hotel casino, the former Manchester United star retired to his room with his then girlfriend — a former Miss World — and ordered champagne. When the waiter arrived he found Best lying in bed, surrounded by bank notes and with the former Miss World half-naked in his arms. “George,” the waiter implored, “where did it all go wrong?”

The George Best story is not one of triumph and trophies, but pain, loss and grief

In sporting terms, at least, it had gone wrong. For those who saw Best play, he was an extraordinary and outrageous talent. A winger who would twist and turn and tease and trick the tortured full-backs he played against, he had the poise and grace that great sports stars enjoy. Just as a cricket bat always seemed to be an extension of Brian Lara’s body, and the bowling he faced appeared ten miles per hour slower, so with Best the ball seemed held magnetically close to his feet, his balance always perfect as he swerved and sidestepped sliding tackles.

And yet the George Best story is not one of triumph and trophies, but pain, loss and grief. By the age of 22 he had won the league title and European Cup, and the Ballon d’Or too. But he soon went off the rails. He drank hard and skipped training sessions and matches to spend time with a string of girlfriends. “I used to go missing a lot,” he later quipped. “Miss Canada, Miss United Kingdom, Miss World.”

The irreverence was part of the charm, but it reflected a carelessness about life that had its consequences. Best’s hard living did not just bring an early end to his top-level career, but to his own health and life. After a liver transplant and later complications with the medication he depended upon, he died in 2005, aged only 59.

Sport is all about opinion and imagination. Supporters can convince themselves each new season will be different to the last. They argue about team selections and formations, substitutions and the mistakes of managers, players and referees. The great “what might have been” is impossible to resist. So it is no surprise that supporters have strident views about players who never fulfil their full potential.

Dele Alli is no George Best, but this summer the debate returned, as Alli, once a great light of Tottenham and England, was loaned by Everton to play for Beşiktaş in the Turkish Super Lig. Alli had signed for Everton in January, but the deal was a clue that they were taking a gamble on a player in trouble. Once he had been linked with transfers for record fees to clubs like Real Madrid, but the Tottenham-to-Everton deal was a free transfer, with conditional payments of up to £40 million if he performed regularly.

He did not, and his story is one of sad decline. Still aged only 26, he scored 51 Premier League goals from midfield, played in a World Cup semi-final for England, and reached a Champions League final. He could turn big matches with moments of brilliance and goal-scoring instinct. But the dreams of supporters — who invest in their heroes and hold them to high expectations — are lost. Nobody expects to see Alli score in a major final for England — as they once hoped — nor do a decent job for struggling Everton.

Pundits complain he is a “mystery” and “a complete and utter waste of time”. But some journalists have leapt to his defence. “What if he just wants to play, earn, live?” one asked, before concluding: “this is not a failed career, a wasted or squandered career.” Alli’s playing years, another noted, “still delivered [their] share of vivid, glorious moments; they just happened nearer the beginning than the end”.

Fair enough. Alli achieved things few players ever will. He had his moments of triumph. And he is a very rich young man. But supporters are entitled to ask what might have been and wonder why the conveyor belt to the very top suddenly stopped. Particularly when Jose Mourinho, Alli’s former manager at Tottenham, once warned him, “you will regret it if you don’t reach what you can reach … you should demand more from yourself,” before later telling him during a team talk he was “fucking lazy”.

Supporters are entitled to ask what might have been and wonder why the conveyor belt to the very top suddenly stopped

Alli is not the first, of course, and he will not be the last. Ross Barkley recently bailed out from Chelsea. Jack Wilshire was shipped out of Arsenal aged 25. Ravel Morrison, who had “as much natural talent as any youngster we ever signed”, according to Sir Alex Ferguson, suffered the ultimate indignity of playing for Birmingham City.

Whatever the protests of overly-gentle journalists, players who waste their talent through laziness and fecklessness will always be criticised. The game matters too much to too many people for that not to happen. And those who waste themselves while behaving appallingly — think Stan Collymore and his assault on Ulrika Jonsson — end up loathed. But those who struggle valiantly against their demons and perform nonetheless — like alcoholic genius Paul McGrath — are loved more for their flaws.

Almost writing his own epitaph, George Best predicted, “they’ll forget the rubbish when I’ve gone and remember the football. If only one person thinks I’m the best player in the world, that’s good enough for me.” But he was wrong. Football fans remember the rubbish as much as the football — and for some it makes the legend loom larger.