Former Juventus winger Dejan Kulusevski spoke about the highs and lows of his time at Juventus: “I know the feeling is that I failed at Juve”. The Swedish international wrote about his time with the Bianconeri in an article for the Player Tribune, sharing his experiences of playing alongside the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo:
“My period at Juventus was a chance to learn from legends. I got to know Zlatan when he made his comeback for Sweden — at the age of 39 — and he was like, “Listen, I’m too nice to you guys. You should see me in Milan.”
“I didn’t know what he meant until I visited his house one day and he told me he was training seven hours a day. Seven hours! The guy is 42 now and he’s still posting pictures and videos of himself training like an animal. What the hell is he training for?! Nobody knows. He’s just being Zlatan.
“And Cristiano? What a guy, man. After training everyone would be on their phones, tap, tap tap, but not him. You could see how hard he worked, how much he wanted it, even though he had nothing left to prove. I gotta be honest, I have never been the type to ask teammates for favours, but I asked Cristiano to sign his shirt, and I gave it to my mother.
“Five years earlier we had been talking about me moving back to Sweden, maybe get a normal job. Now I was playing with one of the greatest of all time.
“Dreams do come true for normal people.”
Kulusevski also shared the lows of his time in Turin, touching on the periods where he spent large periods on the bench:
“As a footballer, I was in a bad place.
“I had barely started a game at Juventus for six months. You feel terrible, because you’ve given your life to play this game, training as hard as you can, and you end up watching players play in your position that are not even wingers. Honestly, I felt embarrassed, even worthless. Some people began saying that I wasn’t good enough, that I was too slow. And it affects you, 100%. It’s normal, it’s human. When you begin to believe them, that’s the devil right there.
“I know the feeling is that I failed at Juventus. Well, I think that’s a strange thing to say when I won two trophies, played in both finals, and decided one of them with a goal and an assist against my former team Atalanta. But in those last six months, it is true that I had a difficult time. When I came to Spurs, I didn’t know how to get out of this negative spiral.”
