LONDON -- Dejan Kulusevski played his first match for 526 days on Monday as he came off the bench in the 87th minute of Tottenham's Premier League 3-1 victory over Coventry City on Monday.

"I thought for Kulusevski, just for the fans because they wanted him on the pitch," Spurs head coach Roberto De Zerbi said after the game.

"In the last five, 10 minutes plus extra time, we needed the support of the fans and they are fantastic with Kulusevski [and] with us. They suffered too much in the last two, three, four seasons. I don't know, but they deserve to celebrate many, many wins."

Kulusevski, 26, suffered a serious knee injury in what appeared to be a seemingly innocuous 19th-minute collision with Marc Guéhi when Spurs played Crystal Palace on the final day of the 2024-25 season.

Then-Spurs manager Ange Postecoglou said the following day that Kulusevski's injury "looks like a knock," but it turned out to be a complex knee injury that has required surgery and seen the player suffer multiple setbacks.

Kulusevski celebrated Spurs' Europa League final triumph over Manchester United while on crutches later that month.

He has said he underwent "knee patella [kneecap] cartilage surgery" to treat the complex injury which saw him miss out on Sweden's World Cup squad.

Tottenham have fired three managers while the Swede has been sidelined -- Postecoglou, Thomas Frank and Igor Tudor -- as the team recorded consecutive 17th-place finishes in the Premier League.

Kulusevski, who shared that he underwent a knee arthroscopy in March which he said "took out what was not supposed to be there" returned to full Spurs training on Aug. 31 before suffering another minor setback in September.

He is one of several Spurs players to have suffered serious injuries over the past year, with an unusually high percentage of them affecting the knee.

But his return has come at a good time for De Zerbi who revealed that Sávio and Lucas Bergvall have been added to the club's lengthy list of absentees for the coming weeks.

Before suffering the injury, Kulusevski had developed into one of Spurs' most important players following his move from Juventus on an initial loan deal in 2022.