Dejan Kulusevski had made up his mind. The Tottenham forward was convinced he would not play another Premier League match.
“Listen, I don’t think this is going to work out. I don’t think I can play anymore,” the Sweden international told Yahoo Sports he had said to his mother.
The injury itself had looked almost incidental. During a Premier League match against Crystal Palace on 11 May 2025 at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Kulusevski went into a first-half challenge with Palace defender Marc Guehi. He landed knowing something was wrong. Scans later revealed cartilage damage inside his knee that surgeons could not simply stitch back together.
What followed was 526 days without a competitive match for Spurs, an entire 2025-26 campaign erased, and a long rehabilitation that took him back to Sweden to rebuild nervous control over the leg before he could even think about a Premier League return.
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On crutches at the Europa League final
Days after surgery, Kulusevski was there for Tottenham’s Europa League final against Manchester United in Bilbao on 21 May 2025. He was on crutches.
“That was one of the hardest days in my life, I think,” he told Yahoo Sports of watching Spurs lift the trophy. “Seeing the team celebrating on the bus, that was probably the most difficult part of all this journey, because you feel so alone in this time.”
He could not climb the podium for his medal, he said, because the surface was too slippery: “I couldn’t even take my medal because it was too slippery to go on that thing [the podium].”
A standing ovation in the 86th minute
The comeback finally arrived on 20 October 2026. With Tottenham two goals up on Coventry in the Premier League, head coach Thomas Frank brought Kulusevski on in the 86th minute. The stadium stood for him. Ben Davies then rounded off a 3-1 win in the 96th minute, Tottenham’s first league victory of the 2026-27 season.
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Spurs’ head coach was asked afterwards why he had chosen that moment.
“I did it for the fans. We needed the support of the fans.”
A second cameo followed four days later at Stamford Bridge, where Spurs won 2-0 and Kulusevski was introduced in the 89th minute. Two matches back, a handful of league minutes, no attempt yet to stretch him further.
Tottenham have presented the return as 526 days in the making.
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Spurs host Crystal Palace at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this weekend. It is the same opponent that cost him 18 months of his career.
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