There have been a number of players who have instantly caught the eye with Tottenham Hotspur this season.
Be it the goals of Son Heung-min, the outstanding goalkeeping of Guglielmo Vicario, the enterprising full-back play of Destiny Udogie, the cool-headed, domineering defending of Micky van de Ven, or the creativity, goals and assists of James Maddison, several performers have thrived under Ange Postecoglou.
Advertisement
Dejan Kulusevski has been more of a slow burner, but he has come to the fore in the past month, scoring against Chelsea and Manchester City and impressing in a new attacking midfield role in Maddison’s absence.
Whether he has been at the forefront or not, underlying it all has been an unstinting work ethic and what looks like a strong desire to do a job for the team in defence or attack.
Given his upbringing in football, that is no surprise.
Kulusevski was reared and raised at the Stockholm club IF Brommapojkarna (translation: the Bromma boys), more commonly known as BP. They are a small club in terms of first-team success, honours and trophies (BP only played in the Swedish top flight for the first time in 2006 and tend to flit between divisions). They finished 14th of 16 in the 2023 Allsvenskan, staying up by virtue of a relegation play-off.
They have small attendances, too, averaging a couple of thousand fans for home games in 2023.
BP’s humble home (Tim Spiers/The Athletic)But where they are big and successful is via their renowned youth academy, believed to be the largest in Europe. And where they win enough trophies to fill a room is via the triumphs of their young players.
BP have more players than fans — 4,000 at the last count, split over hundreds of teams from the age of six upwards. Many (around 85 per cent of those 4,000) play at grassroots level, but the youth academy is a serious business and is thriving more than ever.
When Sweden played Belgium in March, eight of their squad had come through BP’s academy or played for the club. It is a breeding ground for players who go right to the top of Swedish football and sometimes beyond — no mean feat in a city that has three much larger and well-established top-flight clubs in AIK, Djurgarden and Hammarby (25 Swedish league titles between them).
It is here, for nine years that Kulusevski was honed into the basis of the player he is today, one who has 35 Sweden caps and has played for Juventus and Spurs by the age of 23.
Advertisement
“The way he plays now is very similar to how he played when he left us aged 15 — obviously a much higher level, but the same type of player.”
That is Andreas Engelmark, now joint-manager at BP alongside the former Aston Villa and Juventus defender Olof Mellberg.
Engelmark is part of the furniture at BP, working at various levels across the club over the years, including as a youth coach when Kulusevski played from 12 to 15.
“It was pretty early on I could see he had some talent,” Engelmark tells The Athletic at the club’s Grimsta IP stadium in a western district of Stockholm.
“He was great dribbling and with the ball, we just needed to work on his off-the-ball movements in attack, combining with team-mates and his work rate.
“He went to school with a few guys from the team and we had him at the school two times a week and with the youth team in the afternoon.
“Dejan has lived here all his life, he and his parents who still live nearby go back to Macedonia (where Kulusevski’s parents hail from) every summer. Of course, he has that background, it’s a good mixture. The mentality is different if you generalise a bit, but he has those two perspectives of Macedonia and Sweden.
“As for him as a player, his work rate when defending wasn’t good enough, although he was only young. He improved that and left us a more complete player. Then at Atalanta, it was up to him.”
BP’s teams in 2022 (Tim Spiers/The Athletic)It never really happened for Kulusevski at Atalanta, where he failed to start a league game, making only three substitute appearances before his big move to Juventus for £30million ($37.7m in today’s rates) thanks to an impressive loan stint at Parma.
But even back then, he was convinced of his impending journey to the top.
Bartosz Grzelak, who coached Kulusevski in Sweden’s under-21 setup, previously told The Athletic: “We were sitting at dinner and he was very clear about how he saw his career panning out. He said, ‘My plan is first to make my Serie A debut with Atalanta. Then I’ll probably go out on loan to one of the clubs where I have more chances to play. And from there, I’m aiming for the top clubs in Europe’.”
Advertisement
This is exactly what happened.
Kulusevski’s talent and work rate helped that process accelerate, but it was at BP, with its extreme focus on developing young players, where he learned the basics.
“This is our history,” Engelmark says. “There’s a very good foundation here, lots of players in the area and the club is massive in terms of numbers. It’s a strong culture, many of us have been here a long time and there is a clear structure and methodology in how to train.
“We’ve been developing players at a high level and one of the advantages is we let them play quite early. It’s possession-based and in the younger teams, we often press high.
“We were one of the first clubs in Sweden to have an academy from the age of eight that was really structured.”
Kulusevki after scoring Spurs’ equaliser at City (Martin Rickett/PA Images via Getty Images)Engelmark is still regularly in touch with his former prodigy. They exchange messages, he visits England to watch games and Kulusevski will often return home to Stockholm in the summer and train with Engelmark to keep his fitness ticking over.
While Engelmark has had — and continues to have — a big impact on Kulusevski’s career, he says the player has generally forged his way himself with a quiet determination and single-mindedness.
He does not pick out, when asked, a single manager who Kulusevski has told him has been influential on his football journey.
“I’ve never heard him say a specific manager, which reflects his independence,” Engelmark says. “Atalanta, Juventus, Tottenham, Sweden… he just does his thing.
“It’s difficult for me to tell exactly where that mentality comes from, but he’s always been like that; he can take criticism and handle a setback. He uses that energy to become better.
“It probably comes from being a secure person — if you’re not secure, it’s hard to be mentally strong. He’s calm, he knows it’s up to him and he definitely won’t have things handed to him. These are all great attributes to have to be an elite athlete.
Advertisement
“We have a close connection, I’ve known him almost half his life.
“I have to say, he’s always been the same guy. He’s matured, but that calmness is always there, he hasn’t changed from the success he’s had in that way, which many people do. It’s nice that he still trains here in the summer, he still has an apartment in Stockholm and he’s very grounded.”
It is that intelligence and willingness to learn which has helped Kulusevski adapt his game, be it under Antonio Conte where he shone after first arriving from Juventus on loan (before a hit-and-miss injury-plagued season last year after his move was made permanent for £25million), or under Postecoglou. He took a little time to adapt to a completely different style of football but now looks comfortable in what is an intense pressing, possession-based style, something he first encountered all those years ago at BP.
“He’s not the quickest, but he can do that quick movement past a player and then go into a cross,” Engelmark says.
“Some players at real speed just run past someone, but Dejan needs to be smarter. He has speed, but not top, top speed, so needs to use his intelligence. He finds weaknesses in his opponents and uses the strength of his team-mates, as you can see from the relationships he’s formed with Son Heung-min and also before with Harry Kane, they scored a lot of goals together.
“His acceleration is very good from that first step and his technique because he can move the ball quickly. That’s not easy for players. He has awareness, too, he fakes moves, and it’s a key factor.
“What he perhaps hasn’t done so often is repeat that at the Champions League level. He had a few good games in the Champions League last season, but he can do more.”
Doing more — and with greater frequency — is now Kulusevski’s challenge.
Advertisement
Goalscoring has been a weakness. In that loan spell at Parma back in 2019-20, he scored 10 in Serie A but has not got close to that tally since. Last year, he only scored twice in 37 appearances in all competitions, showing a frustrating hesitancy in front of goal, something which continued into the opening months of this season, and he has only scored three times in 35 games for Sweden.
For all his guile, work rate and creativity, attacking the back post or firing in a first-time shot from 20 yards has not been Kulusevski’s thing. Engelmark, as he tells Kulusevski, wants more from him, too.
“Sometimes he needs to be able to do the things he does well even more often and at a high tempo,” he says.
“He needs that relationship with his team-mates, but he can also do more by himself — like being more determined to dribble or to decide a bit before he gets the ball what to do with it. At his peak, he does that automatically, but when he’s having a bad spell he probably thinks more than he should.
“He scores really nice goals, a curl into the far corner… but he needs to get into the box and have more tap-ins. Sometimes he’s outside the box when he should be in it.
“He knows this, but he needs to do it more often and score easy goals. I’m trying to push him!”
So is Postecoglou. It looks like it is working.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57lGpocGllZnxzfJFsZmpqX2WEcLDEo5inZZuquba%2FxK%2BqpKFdqby1wMSnn5qlXajEprDEp2Y%3D