Tottenham Hotspur made some final moves to close out the January transfer window. The north London club completed a double swoop for Juventus’ Dejan Kulusevski and Rodrigo Bentancur.
Kulusevski was in London to complete his move to Spurs and afterward, spoke with the club’s official website. The 21-year-old discussed watching the Premier League while growing up in Sweden as his 18-month loan to Tottenham is now official.
“I feel very good; I’m very happy to be here, very grateful for this opportunity that Spurs have given me,” Kulusevski said.
“The Premier League has always been the league – since I was 15, I was thinking about the Premier League because that’s what we watched in Sweden; that was the best league in the world, and I still think it is. It’s just another world. I was always thinking, ‘when can I go there?’ and then when this opportunity came, I didn’t think twice.
The new Tottenham loanee laid out his plans to make North London his permanent home. Manager Antonio Conte needs some scoring outside of Harry Kane and Son Heung-min, and Kulusevski wants to provide offense.
“I hope to bring energy to the team. I love playing football, it’s the best thing in the world, playing, attacking, defending, playing for each other. To win games, score goals, assists… I just want to do it all,” Kulusevski said.
“That’s how I have been since I was five years old, playing football with my sister, with my family, with my friends. Football is everything I’ve had, and I think it’s fun – the important thing is that you have fun when you play because if you have fun, you’re going to play much better. That’s an important thing that I hope I can bring here.”
Kulusevski finally adds that he hopes to get to know his new teammates and manager Antonio Conte who he has played against during his time in Serie A.
“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,” Kulusevski said.
“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 teammates, so I hope we can help each other a lot.”
Outside of the pitch, the new Spurs forward hopes that his move to the Premier League will allow him to use this opportunity in England to improve his grasp of the English language.
“I’ve been playing in Italy, so I speak perfect Italian,” Kulusevski said. “I speak some English – I’m very happy that I’m here because I know that my English is going to be better, so that’s a good thing – plus I speak Swedish, and my parents are from Macedonia, so I speak Macedonian also.