Dejan Kulusevski says he joins Tottenham well prepared.
Kulusevski has joined Spurs on an 18 month loan from Juventus with the option to buy.
The Swede already has vast amounts of experience for someone who is still only 21 years of age. Having left home before his 16th birthday to pursue a path to the top in Italy, he’s played plenty of football in Serie A, the Champions League, the Coppa Italia – which he won with Juventus in 2020/21 – and even the Euro 2020 finals with Sweden last summer.
“I think I have everything to do very well here,” he said. “I’ve been at some teams in Italy, I’ve had a lot of different coaches, learned a lot from them, had a lot of players around me so I think I’m ready for the Premier League at this age and I can’t wait to play.
“At 15-and-a-half I moved to Atalanta in Bergamo. It was very hard, I missed my family so much, I still do these days, but at that age if I didn’t have the friends I had, it would be more difficult. I had a fantastic year at Parma, it was a one-year loan so I had one year to show everybody what I could do and I felt instantly after three or four games that I was getting comfortable, then after that I was just flying, I was just playing, didn’t think about anything, just enjoying my football, and it goes very well when you’re feeling good, so that’s how I want to be mentally and physically.
“I learned a lot at Juventus – it was two years but two intense years with two different coaches. It’s a very good club with very good players, I’d been playing with one of the best players in the world (Cristiano Ronaldo) so it was a very good experience.
“Now, here at Spurs, I’m excited to work with everybody. I know (Pierluigi) Gollini, I played with him in Atalanta, but I’m very much looking forward to working with the coach, because I know him from Inter. He’s a very good coach, he’s a winner and that’s what I want to be, so I want to learn as much as possible from him. Then with the players, there’s some very good players here and I want to collaborate with them a lot because that’s my playing style – I don’t play alone, I play with my team-mates, so I hope we can help each other a lot.”
