Dejan Kulusevski has revealed that doctors spent this summer talking to him about a knee transplant, an operation he was told no player had ever come back from, and that he turned it down.
The Tottenham star opened up from Sweden’s camp on Tuesday, his first time back with the national team in two years. He spoke about the doubts, the moment he told his mum it was probably over, the help he got from Zlatan Ibrahimovic and a doctor in Serbia, and his disappointment with some of the people around him during 526 days out.
He also explained exactly how much football he expects to play this week, and it is a lot less than he would like.
What did Kulusevski say about the knee transplant?
Dejan Kulusevski damaged the cartilage in his knee in the spring of 2025, in the defeat to Crystal Palace that May. The first operation did not work. Neither did the second, and by the summer of 2026 the specialists were looking at something far more drastic.
“I spent the whole summer talking to other doctors about doing another operation. It would have been a knee transplant. I would have swapped my knee for someone else’s,” he told Fotbollskanalen. “Then I said no: ‘We’ll do it like this. If I’m in pain when I play, then I’ll play with pain.’ I trained and tried to live like a normal person. I trusted it would work out. So far I’ve been right.”
The numbers he was given explain why. Going down the transplant route would have kept him out for roughly another year and a half, and the odds were not good. “They told me: ‘Nobody has ever come back from that, it’s 50/50.’ It was like: ‘No, I don’t want to take it.'”
‘I don’t think it’s going to work’
The lowest point came this summer, when the pain simply would not go away. Kulusevski said he was struggling to walk up stairs, even while training ten hours a day.
“It didn’t matter what I did. Then I started thinking: ‘If it’s over, it’s over,'” he said. “So I had to tell my mum: ‘I don’t think it’s going to work.’ To prepare her and the family. But it was exactly in those days that it changed! And then when it got better, I felt I was going to make it.”
He said his mum told him it was fine and that the family loved him, adding that it is always harder for a mother to watch her child suffer. And if football had ended, he already had a plan: “My answer was to move to an island and be with my family.” His daughter, he said, kept him going.
Zlatan, Perisic and the doctor in Serbia
The turning point came from an unexpected direction. Zlatan Ibrahimovic and his former Spurs team-mate Ivan Perisic both pushed him to see a specialist in Serbia, and that visit changed his mindset.
“He said: ‘Don’t think about other operations, this is what we’re going to do.’ He was so sure it would work. I needed someone by my side who said: ‘Dejan, this is going to be fine,'” Kulusevski explained.
So what actually fixed it? Kulusevski believes the problem was bigger than the knee itself. “It was the nervous system, it was more than an injury,” he said, crediting deep expertise from someone who understood how the body holds on to trauma. After that, the pain eased. He still works with around eight people today.
He was full of praise for Ibrahimovic, too: “Zlatan is the best. I promise. Everyone thinks he’s cocky, but for me Zlatan is more humble than everyone else.” The reply he got after his comeback was typical, he laughed. Zlatan sent one word: “Bravo.”
Was Kulusevski let down by Tottenham?
The most pointed part of the interview was about the people around him. Fotbollskanalen reported that he admitted being disappointed with parts of how Spurs handled the injury, and he did not hide that his long spell out had tested his trust.
“I’ve been disappointed in people during this period, but at the same time I have to forgive everything. It also says so in the Bible. That’s how I’ve moved on,” he said. “Sometimes you wish you’d had more help. But at the same time I understand that we’re all part of a business. I’ve moved on and I love being at the club. I got a really good welcome when I came back.”
He also said plenty of people, “even at the club”, doubted he would return, and that it hurt to hear people say over the summer that he would never play again. “Whoever said I wouldn’t come back doesn’t know me.”
That fits with how slowly Roberto De Zerbi has brought him back. Kulusevski made his first appearance in 526 days off the bench in last month’s 3-1 win over Coventry City, and he has come on in each of the last four Premier League games. His 25 minutes in the 1-0 defeat at Leeds on Saturday were the most he has played in one game since the injury.
How much will he play for Sweden?
Kulusevski was named in Graham Potter’s squad last week, as we covered when Potter brought him back after 526 days out. Sweden host Bosnia and Herzegovina at the Strawberry Arena on Saturday, then travel to Poland next Tuesday to finish their Nations League group. A win on Saturday clinches the group, promotion to League A and a place in pot two for the European Championship qualifying draw.
The plan is a careful one. “I’ll get to play a bit in both games. Around 30 minutes in each match. That’s what’s been said. It’s better than zero, so I’m happy,” Kulusevski said, before adding with a laugh: “I can play 90 minutes in both games. But that’s what I can do. Then it’s not me who decides.”
Potter confirmed on Monday that Sweden are working closely with Spurs on his minutes. “We are of course in contact with Tottenham, and it is logical that we work closely with them,” the Sweden boss said. “They have worked with Dejan for so long to get him back to the level he is at now. Therefore, it is reasonable that we have a close dialogue. We have a pretty good idea of how we can use him.”
Potter also paid tribute to how the 26-year-old came through “the dark periods”, saying the difficult time for the staff was “nowhere near how tough it was for him himself.”
As for where he wants to play, Kulusevski was clear. He is happiest as a No.10, though he accepts he will be moved out wide at times. He is one of several Spurs players away this month, and you can see where the rest of the Spurs squad are playing in our full guide.
Kulusevski’s knee and what it means for Spurs
This interview changes how his comeback should be read. This was not a long injury that simply needed time. By his own account it was close to the end of his career, and the thing that saved it was not a third operation but a different idea of what was wrong.
That also explains why De Zerbi has been so patient. A player who says his knee still feels different on some days, and who was given 30-minute limits by his own country, is not someone Spurs can throw into three games a week yet. Ipswich at home after the break is more likely to bring another cameo than a first start.
The hint of tension with the club is worth watching, but he went out of his way to say he loves being at Spurs and has moved on. What matters now is that the most creative player in the building is fit, happy and, in his words, trying to play like “little Dejan, eight years old” again, without caring about the media, the club or his agent. If he gets there, Tottenham have a January signing nobody had to pay for.
