Alli opened the locked door of his life's grim secrets in Gary Neville interview

So it appears that Dele Alli had a choice. Either allow his career to drift quietly away on a tide of perceived indifference or very real unhappiness or confront the issues that are threatening to ruin his life for good.

Alli, still a young man at the age of 27, has taken the hard route and there will very many people in football who are relieved about that.

Alli's meeting with Gary Neville in a TV studio at times plays less like an interview and more like a confessional, a release of sorrow.

It's like the opening of a locked door and now, as a result, the grim secrets of Alli's life are out. The abuse, the addictions, the mental horrors. The sheer misery of it all.

We will look at Alli with different eyes now and, above all, hope for his recovery.

We will hope for a return to the football field, too, but that is secondary. Firstly, we will wish him some stability and some happiness.

Alli's revelation on Neville's Overlap show that he was abused as a child will have struck those who know him more deeply than we can really imagine.

At MK Dons and at Tottenham in particular, there is a fondness for him that has long endured.

His issues with sleeping pills, meanwhile, have been talked about within football for a while. Issues around medical confidentiality quite rightly prevented their disclosure.

But, like any addict, he has been faced with a dilemma. Ignore his problems, pretend they aren't real and, in doing so, allow them to slowly lead him down a dark hole from which it can be desperately difficult to escape.

Or face them, tackle them and try to beat them.

That battle will, we imagine, go on. But self-awareness underpins it all and as such it may be that round one is already won. Alli has started treatment and that may yet transpire to be the toughest and most important step of all.

Today it is appropriate to question once again the culture of machismo that still runs firm through the centre of all football dressing rooms.

Has that really changed as much as football likes to tell itself it has? Frankly, no. Frailty is sadly still seen as weakness in professional sport.

Equally, any club – any employer – can only do so much. More often than not, the desire to change – to accept help – must come from within. At Spurs and indeed at Everton, they did what they felt they could for their player.

Those who know Alli well say that he was at his best as a footballer when he felt he had something to prove. At Milton Keynes and then in his early days at Tottenham.

As soon as he became what he had strived to be for so long – an established elite talent – they believe they saw the fire go out.

Well now, in his life as much as in his sport, he maybe has an opportunity, as desperately hard as it may be, to grow from the ground up once again.

Alli was always one of English football's brightest talents. Athletic and clever with an ability to see angles, opportunities and openings that really cannot be taught.

None of this seems particularly important now, though. The young man sitting on a sofa in front of Neville's TV cameras did not do so as an athlete but as a damaged young man seeking a way out of the darkness.

Whatever we may one day say of his abilities, his career or his contribution to the English game, this hour or so of dialogue may yet transpire to be one of the most significant of his life.

What's more, Alli's candour, courage and transparency – his making public his trauma and his fear – may also encourage other troubled young folk to take a deep breath and pick up the telephone. Above all, we should maybe thank him for that.