Tottenham Hotspur of England’s Nigerian-born midfielder, Dele Alli has been hit with a heavy hammer by the British nation’s Football Association (FA), for the player’s reckless infringements into branding issues.
Alli, who scored one of the goals in The Three Lions’ 2-0 spanking of Sweden last Saturday, to reach the World Cup semi-finals for the first time in 24 years, but could not save them from losing 2-1 against Croatia on Wednesday, has been fined 70,000 Swiss francs (£53,211).
Alli received the FA’s hammer along with two other players in their national team after the trio wore “unauthorised” socks at the World Cup.
Alli, along with fellow-Tottenham midfielder, Eric Dier and Manchester City forward, Raheem Sterling have been wearing the Devon-made Trusox over their official Nike socks and have ignored a FIFA warning to stop doing so.
In a statement published on its website on Wednesday, FIFA stated that it was fining the FA for “breaching media and marketing regulations and the FIFA equipment regulations”.
The world football governing body added: “FIFA had previously requested the Football Association to cease the activity that led to the sanction.
“In particular, several members of the English national team continued to display unauthorised commercial branding on playing equipment items before and during the quarter-final match between Sweden and England.”
This also comes at a point Liverpool legend, Graeme Souness blamed Alli and Jesse Lingard as well as England’s coach, Gareth Southgate for the loss to Croatia.
Souness said: “I want to emphasise the midfield. You can’t win the big trophies, you can’t dominate football matches.
“You can’t put yourself in a position where you are not giving the ball away unless you’ve got good players in midfield who can keep the ball.
“I come back to Lingard and Dele Alli – two players who want to get on the end of things after there has been clever play by somebody else.
“They don’t want to get involved in keeping the ball and dominating possession. And the make-up of the team was all wrong tonight. All wrong tonight.
“When they come up against a decent team, I think it’s inevitable that they were going to struggle.”
