How Dejan Kulusevski became Tottenham's best player

All it took for Dejan Kulusevski to become one of the best players in the Premier League was to go back to his roots.

Back in the summer Kulusevski was at a crossroads. He had worked hard in Ange Postecoglou’s first season as Tottenham Hotspur head coach without ever quite playing his best football. He never seemed a natural fit for what Postecoglou wanted from a winger — someone to play high and wide, stretching the play, even if that meant seeing less of the ball.

So Postecoglou started to think of a solution.

When he got the Spurs job in summer 2023, he had looked into Kulusevski’s history as a player. Past the Kulusevski who had played on the wing for the Premier League club under predecessor Antonio Conte. Past the Kulusevski who played out wide in Italy for Juventus sides managed by Max Allegri and then Andrea Pirlo. And past the Kulusevski who played his first full Serie A season on the wing, with loan club Parma in Roberto D’Aversa’s 4-3-3.

Postecoglou had looked to Kulusevski’s time at his first professional club, Atalanta, also in Italy. And he saw that long before Kulusevski was pushed out wide, he had played through the middle. And not just as a No 10 who created chances between the lines. But as a No 8 who drove forward with the ball, fulfilling his desire to be deeply involved in the game.

So why not do that again, and for good? Kulusevski had filled in as a No 8 during Postecoglou’s first season, especially last December when James Maddison was out injured. Moving him there permanently could solve three issues at once: the need for Brennan Johnson to play high and wide on the right, Spurs’ lack of dynamism in the centre of the pitch, and Kulusevski’s personal desire to be as involved in the games as possible.

Not everything has gone right at Tottenham this season. They go into tomorrow’s game away to Manchester City just 10th in the 20-team league table. Their most recent game was a 2-1 home defeat against Ipswich Town — the visitors’ first league win of the season at the 11th attempt and first in the top flight since 2002 — which has destroyed what was an improving mood. But there have still been quite a few high points, such as the victories over Manchester United, City (in the Carabao Cup) and Aston Villa.

In all of Spurs’ good moments this season, Kulusevski has been clearly their best player, head and shoulders above the rest. While their stars of 2023-24 — Son Heung-min, Maddison, Cristian Romero — have struggled for consistency, Kulusevski is the only one of the current squad who could argue he has been on top of his game since the campaign kicked off in August.

Go through all the best moments of Tottenham’s season, and Kulusevski has been integral to every single one.

The 4-0 against Everton in August started with his clever lay-off for Yves Bissouma’s opening goal. September’s come-from-behind win at Coventry in the Carabao Cup — which started a five-game winning run — was turned when Kulusevski took control of the game and set up Djed Spence’s equaliser with two minutes of the 90 left.

When Spurs beat United 3-0 at Old Trafford just over a week later, their best away victory under Postecoglou, Kulusevski scored the second with a flying volley reminiscent of his hero and Swedish countryman Zlatan Ibrahimovic. He was the best player on the pitch that day by a distance.

They eventually thumped West Ham 4-1 on October 19 but were 1-0 down and going nowhere when Kulusevski changed the game, surprising goalkeeper Alphonse Areola with a powerful low shot to his near post from the edge of the box. Tottenham were suddenly level late in the first half and never looked back.

When they beat City 2-1 in the Carabao Cup, one of the decisive factors in the game was Kulusevski’s energy, his ability to drive forward with or without the ball. Spurs’ early opener that night came from one such run, a thrilling counter-attack before he crossed perfectly to Timo Werner. He assisted Pape Sarr’s eventual winner too, doubling the lead, and in the second half City could never relax with Kulusevski threatening to slice through them on the break.

And then when Villa visited four days later, the goal that put Tottenham 2-1 up came from a genius reverse pass from Kulusevski through to Dominic Solanke to finish. They went on to win 4-1.

This is a personal highlight reel comparable to any other player in the Premier League this season. It is hard to imagine where Spurs would be if they did not have his drive and creativity in the middle of the pitch. They would have been even more subject to the variations of form of their less consistent players. Which probably doesn’t bear thinking about.

So what is it about Kulusevski that makes him so good?

We can start with his physicality.

Kulusevski has always been an unusual sort of athlete. He is powerful rather than fast. One of the reasons why he looked slightly unusual as a winger was that he never had the lightning-fast top speed you would expect from someone playing out wide in elite football. When Tottenham first signed Kulusevski on loan from Juventus in January 2022, some wondered why their new winger wasn’t faster in transitions.

But there is more to power than just pace. If you watch Kulusevski up close, you are blown away by how strong he is. He can hold off defenders with ease and never gets knocked off the ball. In a Spurs team still adjusting to being without Harry Kane 15 months after his departure to Bayern Munich, he is one of the few players (along with striker Solanke), who can reliably hold onto the ball under pressure in the opposition half.

This is testament to Kulusevski’s own hard work on his physique; the morning gym sessions before training, his reluctance to ever take a day off. Kulusevski is obsessive about his own body — Cristiano Ronaldo is another of his heroes. He also loves to read books and watch documentaries about winners in other fields, recently mentioning basketball duo Michael Jordan and the late Kobe Bryant. Like many modern athletes, Kulusevski is painfully careful about everything he eats. He tests the pH value of water (a way to determine its quality) before he drinks it.

Kulusevski surges forward against Everton (Mark Leech/Offside/Getty Images)

Perhaps Kulusevski’s most important physical trait is his running power. Even if he is not the fastest, when he gets going he is very difficult to stop. And he has the capacity and hunger to keep making those forward runs, with or without the ball, over and over.

“He has an unbelievable capacity to run, on and off the ball,” Postecoglou told reporters in early October. “His physical numbers are ridiculous and he has the quality to hurt teams with that.” After seeing him rip through West Ham two weeks later, Postecoglou said Kulusevski was “relentless in his running capacity”. There is certainly something unforgiving about his physical output, as he keeps bursting forward through the opposition lines, forcing players on the other team to go to areas they do not want to go.

The other side to this is Kulusevski’s ability to win the ball back.

It was painfully clear at the end of last season that Spurs’ press was fading. They needed more aggression in the middle of the pitch, someone to harass the opposition and win the ball back before they could put it over the top of the Tottenham defence. No wonder Postecoglou was such a big admirer of Chelsea’s Conor Gallagher, before his move to Atletico Madrid. But Kulusevski has managed to solve that issue himself. From his new midfield position, he leads the league for possession regains in the final third with 16. Bryan Mbuemo of Brentford and Bournemouth’s Antoine Semenyo are next-best with 12 each. At times, Spurs’ press has looked better than it ever did last year.

But Kulusevski is more than just a cardio monster who never stops running. He is also a brilliantly creative footballer, technically precise, inventive, just as able to wiggle out of small spaces as to burst through large ones. Of course he has always had that ability, which is why he played as a No 10 as a youngster. But now that he is a No 8, he is getting the ball in central areas more than ever before. And he knows how to use it.

For much of last season, Maddison was the creative brain of this team, but he has struggled in this one and has even been on the bench in recent weeks. So responsibility has fallen to Kulusevski to play that role, picking the perfect pass through to the runners beyond him. Tottenham often face narrow low blocks, with very little space between or behind the opposition lines. The pass has to be perfect. Just like it was for Spence that night in Coventry. Or for Werner against City. Or Solanke in the Villa game.

Kulusevski has been Tottenham’s main creative influence this season (Rob Newell/Getty Images)

Maybe we are guilty of just looking at outcomes here rather than processes. But rank everyone in the Premier League by chances created this season and Kulusevski is joint-top, on 30, with Andreas Pereira of Fulham (Chelsea’s Cole Palmer is one behind with 29). Look at chances created from open play and Kulusevski and Palmer lead with 25. Or at completed passes in the opposition penalty area, where only Fulham’s Alex Iwobi is ahead of him, 36 to 34.

So far, this is the most creative season of Kulusevski’s career. He is averaging 3.1 chances created per game, up from 2.2 and 2.0 in his previous two Premier League campaigns. He is more involved in sequences leading to shots than ever before as a Tottenham player: 6.7, compared with 6.1 and 5.4.

This is exactly what Kulusevski wants. He has always thrived on a sense of responsibility, always sought to be the one who seized control of the game and dictated it. He wants to be the leader on the pitch, involved in everything. This is why it has meant so much to him to be Sweden’s captain in recent months.

This is also why the specific role Postecoglou gives to his wide players never fitted naturally with how Kulusevski wants to play the game. Even though he was deployed there more often than Johnson was last season, it was the Wales international signed from Nottingham Forest that summer who was the better fit for the position.

“With Deki, the way we get our wingers to play probably doesn’t suit him,” Postecoglou said about Kulusevski in a media session earlier this month. “Not his skillset, more his personality. He’s a player who’s much more engaged in the game when he’s constantly involved. Bringing him to the central area means he’s constantly doing that.”

Postecoglou knew that staying high and wide and running in behind was not Kulusevski’s natural game. “At times with us last year, when he was on the wing, and with the way our wingers play, you’re not involved all the time,” Postecoglou added. “There’s a discipline in keeping your position. Sometimes not receiving the ball is part of that process. We put our wingers where we do to pin back oppositions. I could see he was… not frustrated, he just wanted to give more.”

That is exactly what Kulusevski has done in this season’s opening months. He took roughly eight touches per game in the central third of the pitch (the space between the two wings) during 2023-24. Now, his average is over 14. This graph shows how much more he is creating in central areas now compared with last season.

Kulusevski is revelling in his new licence to attack where he wants to. “They can’t know how to defend me when I don’t even know where I am going, because it’s all instinct,” he smiled in an interview with Spurs’ media team after that West Ham win. “Finally, I have that freedom. My team-mates trust me, the coach trusts me. Because when I play like this, this is my position, it’s all instinct and I can hurt defenders in every kind of way.”

For years, Kulusevski had been a hard-working winger in teams who liked to play out wide, from Parma to Juventus to Conte’s Tottenham. “It’s not that he can’t play out wide,” Postecoglou told reporters. “He got put in that position because he was effective out there — particularly in teams that played counter-attacking football, which allowed him the space to run at people.”

But for a team who want to play the way Spurs aim to, Kulusevski needs to be in the middle of the pitch. Just as he was as a youngster coming out of the academy ranks at Atalanta. “I looked at his background, when he was growing up, and when he first broke into the first team,” Postecoglou said. “That was his position.”

Kulusevski was 16 when Atalanta signed him from his first club, Brommapojkarna in Stockholm, for 100,000 euros. (£83,000/$105,000 at current exchange rates). He emerged into Italian national consciousness when he drove Atalanta to the Primavera (under-19) championship in 2018-19. He was their standout player that season, arguably the best player of his age in the country.

If you watch the final, against Inter at the Ennio Tardini stadium in Parma, you see something very familiar.

A teenage Kulusevski during his time at Atalanta (Massimiliano Ferraro/Getty Images)

With seven minutes left and the game goalless, Atalanta clear their lines and Kulusevski bursts forward to win a loose ball that should never have been his. Skipping past one opponent, the 19-year-old drives on through the middle of the pitch, more energetic than anyone else on it. Deep in Inter territory, he pauses, looks up and stabs a pass that takes five opposition players out of the game. Ebrima Colley runs onto it, finishes well, and the title is on its way to Bergamo.

That is the Kulusevski — physically dominant, desperate for responsibility, desperate to be decisive — that we have seen at Tottenham this season. Postecoglou knows that for a player so committed to achieving greatness, there is no limit to how good he can be. “If you speak to him, he’s got pretty lofty ambitions for himself as a player, and what he can do,” Postecoglou said when talking to reporters earlier this month. “The exciting bit is that I think there’s a lot more to come.“

Pep Guardiola knows exactly what City are likely to be up against if Kulusevski plays at the Etihad on Saturday evening.

There is a viral clip of him in the post-match press conference after City beat Spurs in January last year. “Kulusevski”, Guardiola says before blowing out his cheeks dramatically. “What a player.”

And after Kulusevski orchestrated that cup win over the Premier League champions last month, this reporter wanted to get Guardiola’s thoughts on one of my favourite players. How good did he think Kulusevski had been that evening? “Really good,” Guardiola smiled. “He’s a really, really good player.”

So, what did he like about him? “Everything.”

GO DEEPER

“Kulusevski? What a player!” – how he became Tottenham’s best

Additional reporting: Anantaajith Raghuraman

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Kelsea Petersen)