BIG INTERVIEW: DEAN LEWINGTON
DEAN Lewington has shared a dressing room with hundreds of players in his 22 years at MK Dons – but one stands head and shoulders above the rest.
Dele Alli was just 16 when he made his debut for the Buckinghamshire club in an FA Cup first round clash against Cambridge City in 2012.
His first touch was a backheel and he scored from 35 yards in the replay, setting in motion a meteoric rise that would take the attacking midfielder to Tottenham, England and a World Cup semi-final by the age of 22.
Briefly valued in the region of £100m, Alli’s career has subsequently unravelled at the hands of injury, addiction and mental health issues. Now 29, he is rebuilding from scratch with Como in Serie A.
For Lewington, though, Alli’s struggles should not be allowed to detract from the brilliance he demonstrated at his peak, or the precocious talent that produced 18 goals in 62 appearances for the Dons.
“Dele was an incredibly talented boy,” says Lewington, who announced this week that his 947game playing career will finally draw to a close at the end of the season.
“To watch him grow up here, then to see him go and achieve what he did – it was a total pleasure.
“It was obvious to anybody how good he was with a ball at his feet. Even at 16, he’d do things beyond any of us. That’s why Tottenham signed him for £5m and why Roy Hodgson picked him for England.
“But what a lot of people don’t know about Dele is that he’s an amazing athlete. I remember speaking to him after he joined Tottenham in 2015, and he was talking about pre-season.
“It’s a big thing to go to a new club when you’re 18 or 19, coming from a lower league and you’re joining a team full of internationals.
“But Dele went in there on day one and he was winning every pre-season run, dominating every physical metric. They couldn’t believe his running power and I think that was kind of the moment when they went ‘Hang on, we’ve got a player here’.
“We’d been playing him as a centre-mid but Mauricio Pochettino used him as a No.10 behind Harry Kane and everything just clicked. I honestly think he was one of the best players in the world at that point, and I was made up for him.
Right track
“It’s a shame that he’s lost his way a little but hopefully he’s getting back on the right track and he can get somewhere close to being what he was.”
Lewington’s own career began when Alli was in primary school, and MK Dons were still a twinkle in Pete Winkelman’s eye.
The music supremo was the man who infamously renamed and relocated the old Wimbledon FC, for whom the young left-back had already featured 31 times.
Such was the uproar that the FA altered its rules to ensure no club could ever suffer the same ment, and to this day the stigma retreat-mains. Did Lewington understand just what a seismic event he was living through at the time?
“Not really,” admits the old, who is the son of former En40-yeargland coach Ray Lewington and the cousin of current Middlesbrough defender Luke Ayling.
“We were 17 or 18 and this was in the days before social media. Mobile phones had only just come about and none of us really read the papers.
“Obviously we saw the protests and things at the early games but I think we were quite sheltered from it in a way that would probably be impossible now.
“And what you’ve got to remember is that for the boys that were there, anything was better than the status quo.
“We’d been in administration for a year. We’d been paid about two months’ worth of wages for the whole season. The club was crumbling away and there was no way of retrieving it, so the prospect of something different – whatever that was – was appealing to all of us.
“Do I understand the stigma? Yeah, I get it. It’s part of the club’s history and you can’t rewrite the narrative. The facts are the facts and the club will always have to own that.
“But at the same time, it wasn’t my decision. I didn’t make it happen. I was just playing football and trying to make a living.”
Little did he realise it then, but Lewington would spend the next two decades in Buckinghamshire.
In that time, he won promotions from League Two and League One, was twice named in the PFA Team of the Season and broke a long-standing record for the most appearances by a player at a single club in the EFL. But it could have been very different…
Offers
“I did have offers to leave when I was younger,” he admits. “And they were always from higher divisions – the Championship and the Premier League.
“Could I have played there? Yeah, I think so. I’ve played with and against a lot of Championship players and I think I acquitted myself pretty well.
“But it just never materialised. Valuations weren’t met and I was never prepared to be disruptive or down tools to try and force a move, just because of the loyalty I felt to Pete in terms of what he’d done for us as young players. That probably cost me when I was younger.
“Then you sign a contact, and another contract, and all of a sudden you’ve spent 15 years at one club without that ever having really been the intention.
“But I’ve got no regrets. I’ve had ups and downs, like anyone in their career, but I’ve had moments I’ll cherish, like winning promotion to the Championship in 2015. I wouldn’t change anything.”
Just as Lewington never planned to spend so long at MK Dons, he had not contemplated a career in coaching before a spell of managerial upheaval thrust him into caretaker charge three times in the last four years.
That experience, coupled with a steep reduction in playing time, prompted his decision to hang up his boots and whether it’s with the Dons or elsewhere, Lewington has no shortage of influences to call on. in “I’ve literally played under every manager this club has ever had,” he laughs. “There were definitely a couple where I didn’t agree with the way they worked or tried to play but, on the whole, I’ve been really fortunate.
“Karl Robinson was great, personally and professionally. More recently, Russell Martin and Liam Manning were fantastic.
“I was lucky enough to go and watch Bristol City train when I wasn’t in the team here, and I’m not surprised at all to see them going so well under Liam. He’s a great coach and one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. He was so professional and respectful in the way he handled people here and I think you can see how much that young team is playing for him.
“Those are probably the three who really shaped my career the most and the ones I’ve taken the most from. But I’ve got my own ideas as well and – while it’s a bit scary to stop playing – I’m looking forward to what comes next.”
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