Dele Alli Hand Celebration

Submission 39,349

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About

Dele Alli Hand Celebration refers to the act of placing one's hand in an Ok hand symbol and holding it to one's eye, as popularized by professional soccer player Dele Alli. Online, people attempted to recreate the gesture, but were left confused as to how to their hands in that position. Videos of these attempts were cataloged as the #DeleAlliCelebrationChallenge or #DeleChallenge.

Origin

On August 12th, 2018, the British soccer team Tottenham Hotspur beat the Newcastle United. Following the win, Tottenham player Dele Alli held his hand to his eye and made a circle with his index finger and thumb (shown below).^[1]

Spread

That day, Alli published a picture of himself doing the motion on his instagram ^[2] page. The post (shown below, left) received more than 458,000 likes in three days.

Additionally, Delle published a video on his Instagram Stories of his teammates attempting to make the gesture in their locker room (shown below, right).^[3]

On August 14th, Twitter user @COPA90US published a video of Alli and fans attempting the gesture. The post (shown below) received more than 1,500 retweets and 3,900 likes.

That day, Twitter^[4] published a moments page about the challenge, archiving various attempts.

Several media outlets covered the challenge, including The Sun,^[5] Heavy.com,^[6] Yahoo, ^[7] BBC^[8] and more.