Kulusevski told his mum he feared he would never play football again during year-long injury

Dejan Kulusevski came close to retiring during his year-long absence from football, the Tottenham winger has revealed, admitting he sat down with his mother to warn her he did not believe he would ever play again.

The Sweden international suffered a broken cartilage in a collision with Crystal Palace’s Marc Guehi on the final day of the 2023-24 Premier League season. The injury kept him sidelined for the entirety of 2024-25, and he has only recently returned to action with brief substitute appearances against Coventry and Chelsea.

“I told my mother, I sat with her and I told her, ‘Listen, I don’t think this is going to work out’,” Kulusevski said in an interview with the Spurs official website. “I had to prepare her, ‘I don’t think I can play anymore’.”

The former Juventus midfielder described the moment of impact as deceptively understated, making the eventual diagnosis all the more alarming. “I remember the game, it felt a great warm-up, and then I remember the hit after 10 minutes. It was pain but it didn’t hurt that much, it has been much worse. I could feel that the knee was moving a little bit too much. I broke my cartilage, and the cartilage flew out and went to another part of the knee, and they can’t fix cartilage — so in the scan they could see that a part of my cartilage was gone.”

Among the matches Kulusevski missed was Tottenham’s Europa League final win over Manchester United in May 2025, the club’s first major trophy in years. He was present at the game on crutches but described the experience as one of the hardest days of his life.

“It was so beautiful to see all the people happy, but it was very difficult for me, going there with crutches, can’t walk,” he said. “I couldn’t even take my medal because it was too slippery to go on that thing [the podium]. Things like this was not nice but I accepted it.”

The most painful moment, Kulusevski added, came after the final whistle. Unable to travel on the team flight back to London, he remained in Barcelona and watched his teammates celebrate on the bus without him. “That was probably the most difficult part of all this journey, because you feel so alone in this time.”

Now back in contention, Kulusevski is expected to continue building his fitness as Spurs look to extend their winning run to three games against Leeds.