Dejan Kulusevski said he feared his professional career was over after a serious knee injury. GOAL said the problem kept him out for the entire 2025-26 campaign before his recent return to competitive action for Tottenham.
How the injury happened
GOAL said the injury happened during the final match of the 2024-25 season following a clash with Marc Guehi. Speaking to Tottenham's official website, Kulusevski said: "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."
Fear over his career
Kulusevski said he feared he might not play again. He said: "I told my mother, I sat with her and I told her, ’Listen, I don’t think this is going to work out’. I had to prepare her, ’I don’t think I can play anymore’."
Absence and return
GOAL said Kulusevski's time out lasted 526 days. GOAL also said he had recently returned to competitive action with brief cameo appearances against Coventry and Chelsea.
Europa League final aftermath
GOAL said Tottenham beat Manchester United in the 2025 Europa League final while Kulusevski was sidelined. Kulusevski said attending the celebrations on crutches after the final was one of the hardest days of his life. He said: "That was one of the hardest days in my life, I think. It was so beautiful to see all the people happy, but it was very difficult for me, going there with crutches, can’t walk. I couldn’t even take my medal because it was too slippery to go on that thing . Things like this was not nice but I accepted it and I came back to Barcelona and I had to stay there because I couldn’t travel with the flight back so 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."
