Signed by Tottenham on loan from Juventus for 18 months, Dejan Kulusevski has found a new lease of life in London.
He has played very well under Antonio Conte, becoming a regular under the Italian at Spurs, which has, in turn, earned him his country’s Guldbollen (Golden Ball), awarded to that year’s best Swedish footballer.
It’s the first time since 1993 that someone as young as 22 has picked up the award, and the player gave a lengthy interview to Aftonbladet to discuss his career to date, with all the ups and downs that have led him to posing for pictures with the trophy.
Crediting both his surroundings and parents for giving him the determination to succeed, the Tottenham player left his home country in 2015 to give Italian football a go.
That’s where he stayed until January of 2022, when things weren’t going well at Juventus and Fabio Paratici came to the rescue.
He said: “In the second season, I started to doubt myself. This voice came in: ‘Maybe I’m not as good as I think’. It’s the worst things that can happen to a football player. Then you start to doubt all the decisions you make on the field. It was a difficult period, but it has made me stronger.
“I feel like I’ve never been better than now. That I’m in a fantastic place, both on and off the pitch. There will be bad times too. Things are currently going well in the national team and in the club, but I’m always ready in case it ends.”
Regarding the move to Tottenham itself: “I was nervous, terrified. It was a new league, the Premier League, where everything goes so much faster and everyone is much stronger. I had had a poor playing time at Juventus and didn’t know what I was going to do.
“Luckily, I came to a club that knew who I was, got a manager who had wanted me a couple of years earlier, as well as a director of football who brought me to Juventus. They knew what I was capable of. I will always be grateful to them, especially in the first month when they helped me a lot. After that, I just flew.”
Regarding Conte, he says the Tottenham manager is ‘very strict, has a lot of rules and is very tough’, but he is also ‘very nice on the inside’ and someone ‘who really cares about the person behind the player’.
As for what the future holds for him and his club in 2023: “Things must go better on all levels. I absolutely believe I can top it. Looking forward to the Champions League against Milan. Looking forward to the Premier League where we are in fourth place. I think we can play much better and I think we will during these six months.”
