The Dubliner who's gone from non-league to the Championship in a year

Updated at 20.04

MILLENIC ALLI does not give up easily.

As a teenager, he was released by Bury.

As recently as 2022, he was again let go, this time by Stockport County.

Yet as the latest transfer deadline approached, he moved to the Championship.

Although Luton Town have struggled this year, they were playing Premier League football as recently as last season.

It is a remarkable rise for Alli, who has made two big leaps in successive January transfer windows.

Other Championship clubs, including Bristol City, Cardiff City and Blackburn Rovers had been linked with the Dublin-born attacker, who until January last year was being described as “one of the non-league’s hottest talents” before he signed with League One side Exeter City.

Alli spoke to The 42 before completing the move to Luton and reflected on his non-league rise.

He moved to England at 14, having played in Ireland with Lucan-based Esker Celtic and St Francis.

The youngster knew travelling across the water would give him a better chance of making it as a professional footballer and while his family wanted to move anyway, he describes the decision as “a no-brainer” from a sporting perspective.

But he went later than his Nigeria-born mother and four siblings to their Bolton base, extending his stay in Ireland by a couple of months so that he could represent the Dublin District Schoolboys League in the Kennedy Cup, an U14s competition that tends to attract the brightest young footballers in the country. It proved worth the wait, as his team triumphed in that year’s competition.

Having originally signed on a scholarship, Bury’s decision not to offer Alli a professional contract threatened to derail the longstanding dream of becoming a footballer.

“I fell out of the game for a little while,” he recalls. “I started playing the non-leagues. So after that, I kept working, trying to work my way back up.”

The youngster refused to get too discouraged by this setback.

“Disappointment works differently for everyone. For me, it just gave me that extra fuel to feel like I got to do more. I got to do better. I’ve got to prove everyone wrong really.

“I feel like it helped me build resilience to come back stronger. So
I’m almost glad I had to go through those kinds of things.”

After Bury, Alli had a spell in the Northern Premier League — the seventh tier of English football.

He started the 2019-20 campaign at South Shields, making a handful of appearances before having loan spells in the same division with Workington.

Ahead of the following season, he signed with Ashton United for another year in the Northern Premier League.

In July 2021, he moved to England’s fifth tier with Stockport County, as his career appeared to be going in the right direction.

Yet he immediately dropped down a division and signed on loan with National League North side Chorley, helping the team reach the playoffs.

Alli was then let go without having played a game for Stockport and subsequently signed by their National League rivals Halifax.

At this point, aged 22, Alli agrees his career started to take off.

“Halifax is where I was given a platform to go and play plenty of games and express myself,” he adds.

16 goals in 54 appearances convinced Exeter to sign the player in January last year.

But the move got off to an inauspicious start.

An injury meant Alli had to wait until March to make his debut.

He finished the season with four goals in 10 League One appearances — with all of them coming in the last four matches of the campaign.

It was far from the perfect season, as Exeter finished mid-table in 13th.

Yet Alli, with a penchant for scoring spectacular goals, had shown enough in his short time at the club that those Championship links were already surfacing by the summer.

On his slow and frustrating start to life in League One, he adds: “Coming in at the start, it was somewhat difficult, because coming back from an injury, as well as matching the jump was obviously [tough]. It was a fast tempo, everything was just better quality.

“So I had to match that very quickly. Once you’re in the system and understand how the club plays and what the manager wants, you just have to meet those criteria very fast.”

This season, his game appeared to go up another level.

He scored 12 goals in 33 appearances, including four in his last three for an Exeter side experiencing a difficult season, as they sit 17th in the table.

That impressive form convinced Luton to pay €1.8 million for the striker’s services.

Despite some top performances of late, Alli believes there is still “more to come” from him.

“On a personal note, it can be better. Football is ups and downs. I’ve had good periods, I’ve had not-so-good periods, and I feel like I just got to use them as a learning curve, and use that to improve in what I can and do better where I can.

“I feel like confidence is a massive part of my game. And you know, for a lot of players as well, the more confident you are, the more likely things are going to come off. Because you’re going to try new things, you’re going to play on the front foot. And I feel like I’ve had a lot more confidence recently.”

A year or two ago, the idea of Alli getting an Ireland call-up might have seemed unrealistic.

But the rapid progress he has made in recent months means it is suddenly conceivable.

Other players in the national squad were notable late developers, such as Chiedozie Ogbene, who spent his early career in the League of Ireland and played for Exeter City after moving to England.

Alli, who turns 25 tomorrow, says he has not been contacted by Heimir Hallgrímsson or any member of the Irish staff but hopes to one day represent his country.

“When I was younger, I had blips in some of the call-ups and going to the camps and whatnot, but I’ve always wanted to play for Ireland, so you never know what can come about.

“I’ve got to keep working, keep scoring, get the numbers up, the performance up. Then it’s possible, you never know what can happen.”

The clubs and environments he has been part of may have changed regularly since his teenage days at Bury, but Alli insists the mentality will remain the same.

“There’s always more. You know, I’m always looking to work harder and improve and do better, play more games, score more goals and finish as high as possible. So that’s always the goal. 

“You always have to believe you can get to the top, wherever you end up. God Willing it’s good, and you feel content and happy anyway. So I always believe I can get to the top and play as high as possible. That’s always been my dream. And I’ll never stop dreaming that.”

‘God is good’ is the phrase placed below Alli’s official account on X (formerly Twitter) and religion is a “massive” part of his life.

“I’m a very religious man. I grew up in a religious background, so I believe, you got to stay prayed up. You’ve got to stay close to God, and whatever is going to be for you is going to be for you.

“I believe I wouldn’t get to where I am without God. So, I’ve got to stay on this journey.”

And from a footballing perspective, Alli’s unbreakable faith has certainly been rewarded.