Eric Dier is “disappointed” with himself that he did not do more to help former Tottenham Hotspur and England team-mate Dele Alli when he was in rehab for an addiction to sleeping pills.
www.thetimes.co.uk
Eric Dier is “disappointed” with himself that he did not do more to help former Tottenham Hotspur and England team-mate Dele Alli when he was in rehab for an addiction to sleeping pills.
A fortnight ago Dele revealed the traumas that he has carried since his childhood, including being molested at the age of six and dealing drugs as an eight-year-old. The Everton midfielder last month checked out of a facility in the United States having spent six weeks there in the wake of taking sleeping pills to “escape from reality”.
“I’m upset with myself and disappointed with myself that I didn’t do more,” Dier told reporters during Spurs’s recent tour to Asia. “‘I was with him just a week before [Dele’s interview], when he was at my wedding.
“When he was in rehab — and I knew he was in rehab — I spoke to him a few times and messaged him, because I was having my wedding. I said to him, ‘I don’t know if you’re going to make it,’ because obviously I knew what he was going through.
“And the first thing was that he was insulted that I’d asked him if he was going to be there. It was like it was unimaginable that he wasn’t going to be there even though everything he was going through. That’s the type of person he is, you know. Dele has a heart of gold, he really does.
“For me, it was difficult to watch, upsetting. My overwhelming feeling, which I said to him, is probably I’m upset I didn’t do more.
“He’s been a great friend to me. He just has been. It’s not all one way. He’s done many things over the course of time that mean a lot to me. I know I could call him right now if I needed him to be here in Singapore and he’d come. That’s the kind of friend he is.”