Remember yesterday when a Swedish newspaper posted a video of Dejan Kulusevski visiting the Sweden national team and walking with a slight limp, and then it got amplified by the worst Twitter aggregators and everyone got really mad about it considering how long he’s been out of action due to a fractured patella injury he received late last season? Also, was that the single longest run-on sentence in the history of Cartilage Free Captain? Cannot confirm.
Well anyway, apparently that got enough attention
that Kukusevski himself took to social media to comment on it. He basically said that he had a small procedure a couple of weeks ago to remove some stuff that was floating around his knee, and that the knee itself feels “great.”
But who are you going to believe, Dejan Kulusevski or your lying eyes? Well, enter Jack Pitt-Brooke at the Athletic, who basically made an entire article out of Deki’s Instagram story. The key difference, however, is that JPB actually took the time to speak to the club to confirm it.
According to The Athletic, unnamed club sources speaking anonymously confirmed that Kulusevski underwent an arthroscopic surgical procedure, what was called a “small intervention,” two weeks ago to remove some debris in the knee, or what Deki called stuff that “was not suppose [sic] to be there.”
I know some people are going to read this and be all “WHY IS DEKI HAVING ANOTHER SURGERY FFS SPURS MEDICAL STAFF” but in speaking to a few medical professionals I know in real life, this kind of thing is both a) pretty common and b) usually minimally invasive if done arthroscopically, which it seems it was.
Does this mean Deki is ready to come back and gloriously lead us out of relegation danger? Oh hell no, probably not. Everything I’ve read about Deki’s injury suggests that patella injuries are both rare and complicated, and can take a long time to come back from. Nothing I’ve seen in Deki’s injury recovery process makes me think any differently, and while you can be mad at the club for slow-walking the reveal the extent of Kulusevski’s injury and recovery time, getting irrationally upset about LimpGate just feels to me like doom-scrolling Spurs content on your phone. If you want to get upset at someone, try the aggregators who did their damndest to make this a THING™ and amplified a video without context in order to further vague (and likely rage-induced) engagement.
