Dejan Kulusevski

Dejan Kulusevski (Дејан Кулушевски; born 25 April 2000) is a Swedish professional footballer who plays as a winger or midfielder for club Tottenham Hotspur and the Sweden national team.

Coming through from the youth system, Kulusevski made his senior debut for Atalanta in 2019, before joining Parma on loan at the beginning of the 2019–20 season. He joined Juventus during the winter transfer window for €35 million, and was sent back to Parma on loan for the rest of the season. In January 2022, Kulusevski was sent on loan to Tottenham Hotspur in England. In June 2023, Tottenham signed Kulusevski permanently on a deal until 2028.

Kulusevski was born in Sweden to a Swedish Macedonian father and a Macedonian mother. He represented both Macedonia and Sweden internationally at youth level, before opting to play for his birth country at senior level, making his full debut in 2019.

Early career
Kulusevski was born in Stockholm and joined the youth activities of IF Brommapojkarna at the age of six.

Atalanta
He joined the Atalanta youth system on 7 July 2016 from Brommapojkarna, before making any senior appearance for the club. He made his Serie A debut on 20 January 2019, coming on as a substitute for Marten de Roon in a 5–0 away win against Frosinone. He made a total of three appearances for the club throughout the 2018–19 season, each as a substitute.

Loan to Parma
On 18 July 2019, Kulusevski signed to Serie A club Parma on loan until 30 June 2020. He scored his first Serie A goal in a 3–2 home win against Torino, on 30 September.

Following his form while on loan with Parma during the first part of the 2019–20 Serie A season, during which he scored four goals and provided seven assists in 17 league appearances, on 2 January 2020, Kulusevski joined fellow Serie A club Juventus on a four-and-a-half-year deal, for €35 million, which could possibly rise to €44 million with variables.

Kulusevski was sent back on loan to Parma for the remainder of the season. He finished the season with 10 goals and nine assists, and was awarded the Serie A Best Young Player for the season.

Juventus
Kulusevski scored on his Juventus debut on 20 September 2020 in a 3–0 league win at home against Sampdoria. On 19 May 2021, he scored the opening goal and later set-up Federico Chiesa's match-winning goal in a 2–1 victory over Atalanta in the 2021 Coppa Italia Final. In the next season, Kulusevski scored the winning goal in the Champions League match against Zenit Saint Petersburg with a header in the 86th minute on 20 October. Kulusevski's playing time was reduced under Massimiliano Allegri, making 20 appearances and scoring two goals.

Tottenham Hotspur
On 31 January 2022, Kulusevski was sent on an 18-month loan to Premier League side Tottenham Hotspur; the loan deal was worth €10 million, and included an option for purchase, which would become an obligation under certain conditions for an additional fee of €35 million. He made his first appearance for Spurs on 5 February in the FA Cup match against Brighton & Hove Albion, coming on a substitute in a 3–1 win. On 19 February, Kulusevski scored his first goal for Tottenham in the fourth minute of the match which Tottenham eventually won 3–2 against Manchester City. In his first season, Kulusevski managed 13 goal involvements (five goals and eight assists) in 18 Premier League matches. However, he struggled the following season, “through a mixture of injuries, bad form and arguably poor management”.

On 17 June 2023, it was announced that Kulusevski had signed permanently with Tottenham Hotspur until 2028. On 16 September, Kulusevski's 100th-minute winner gave Tottenham a 2–1 turnaround win over Sheffield United, sealing the latest ever winning comeback in Premier League history.

International career
Born in Sweden to Macedonian parents from Ohrid, Kulusevski played for all Swedish youth national teams, as well as the Macedonia under-17 national team. He was called up to the Sweden national team for the first time in November 2019 for the UEFA Euro 2020 qualifying games against Romania and the Faroe Islands. For the senior national team, Kulusevski has said that his choice of allegiance was 'an easy one' since it was always his preference to represent Sweden.

Kulusevski made his senior international debut for Sweden on 18 November 2019, coming on as a substitute for Ken Sema in a 3–0 win against the Faroe Islands in the last game of the Euro 2020 qualifying stage. On 8 September 2020, he made his first start for Sweden, playing for 90 minutes before being substituted for Albin Ekdal in a 0–2 loss to Portugal in the 2020–21 UEFA Nations League. On 14 November 2020, Kulusevski scored his first international goal against Croatia in a 2–1 home win in the Nations League.

On 8 June 2021, Kulusevski tested positive for COVID-19 amid its pandemic in Sweden, and was ruled out of Sweden's opening UEFA Euro 2020 match against Spain on 14 June.

Style of play
A tall, physically strong, and versatile player, Kulusevski is capable of playing in several midfield and attacking roles, and has been deployed as an attacking midfielder, as a box-to-box midfielder, as a winger on either flank, or even as an offensive-minded central midfielder, known as the mezzala role in Italian (literally "half-winger"); his main position is playing as an attacking midfielder behind the striker. He has also been deployed as a makeshift centre-forward on occasion. His main qualities are his acceleration, speed, stamina, and his ability to switch the play or provide assists and through balls to teammates, courtesy of his vision and passing ability. He also possesses good technique, dribbling skills, and striking ability, which enables him to score goals, in addition to creating chances for teammates.

Regarded as a promising and hard-working player in the media, his manager at Parma, Roberto D'Aversa, has compared Kulusevski to Mohamed Salah. He noted how the player "is always among the players who cover the most distance in every game", and "has the right mentality". Kulusevski himself named compatriot Zlatan Ibrahimović as an influence. Regarding his own playing style, he commented in a 2019 interview with Sportbladet: "I like to have the ball at my feet. I used to dribble a lot when I was a kid but I have got better at moving the ball more quickly. I have developed my defensive game, that was a weakness before, and that has made me a more complete player." He has also cited Belgian footballers Kevin De Bruyne and Eden Hazard as players he admires and seeks to emulate.

International
Scores and results list Sweden's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Kulusevski goal.

Honours
Juventus
 * Coppa Italia: 2020–21
 * Supercoppa Italiana: 2020

Individual
 * Serie A Best Young Player: 2019–20
 * Fotbollsgalan Best Midfielder: 2020
 * Guldbollen: 2022 and 2023