The ex-Everton defender MK Dons players tipped to star ahead of Dele
The youngster came into the MK Dons squad with a bang
While Dele Alli will always be remembered as the break-out star from MK Dons’ academy, the players at the time actually thought it would be one of his team-mates who would take the world by storm.
After a spell-binding debut against Cambridge City in the FA Cup in 2012, Dele would go on to become not only a £5 million Premier League star for Tottenham Hotspur, helping them to a Champions League final and their highest finish in the league since the 1960s, but also an England international and World Cup goal-scorer.
For Dean Bowditch though, who made more than 200 appearances for the club between 2011-2017, it was actually another youngster who he and many of his team-mates at the time were backing to be the star of the crop of talent coming through the academy - Brendan Galloway.
“We thought Brendan was the one for us,” said Bowditch. “We looked at him like ‘wow!’ He was like a horse running up and down the left-hand side! And he could play on both sides.
“He really set the standard for the type of academy players coming through. We produced really good players, and Karl was giving them a chance.”
Galloway made his debut for the club at just 15-years-old in 2011, and went on to make 17 appearances for Dons before he was snapped up by Everton, taking him to the top flight in 2014.
His career has stuttered since though, making just 169 appearances, with the majority of those coming as a regular at Plymouth in the last five years.
Galloway’s Stadium MK breakthrough came amidst a swathe of youngsters beginning to force their way into Karl Robinson’s team during a patchy 2013/14 campaign. Alongside Galloway, the likes of Patrick Bamford, Dele, Tom Flanagan, Giorgio Rasulo and George Baldock all started to make names for themselves.
While Dons finished an uneventful 10th in League One, Bowditch said the influx of youngsters who were blooded that year helped launch some pretty impressive careers.
He added: “We started to see younger players start to come through. We had the likes of Dele, Patrick Bamford, Brendan Galloway and Giorgio Rasulo starting to get a bit of time with the first-team.
“In that season, we started to fall off a bit, I can’t remember where we finished, but we started to give these players the chance to play, and to make mistakes. They needed to learn, and when they came back, the rest is history.”