Only a few weeks ago, you might have wondered whether Radu Dragusin would ever get back in the Tottenham team.
He returned from an 11-month injury absence on December 28, coming on for the final minutes of the 1-0 win at Crystal Palace. It was a special moment for Dragusin, with his family in attendance at Selhurst Park. His team-mates were delighted for him, Micky van de Ven pushing him forwards towards the away end to receive their applause.
But it was also clear that competition for places at centre-back was fiercer than ever. Van de Ven and Cristian Romero were, of course, the first-choice pair and would start almost every game unless one of them was rested.
Kevin Danso arrived after Dragusin’s injury and had effectively replaced him as the solid, reliable back-up to the two big-name centre-backs. With Joao Palhinha able to fill in there too, it felt as if Dragusin might have a long wait to get back into the team.
There was loan interest in Dragusin from Italy during the January window. The attraction would have been understandable. He had barely played for a whole year. If he had sat on the bench for the second half of this season too, it would have been 18 months since his last real run of games. But Tottenham’s position was firm: they did not want to let Dragusin go. So he knuckled down, kept working, and in the last few weeks his circumstances started to change.
First, Van de Ven picked up what Frank only described as a “minor” injury, which ruled him out of the games against Eintracht Frankfurt and Manchester City the week before last. Then Danso, the first replacement, sustained a rare big-toe ligament injury in Frankfurt, ruling him out for weeks. Suddenly, Spurs were down two centre-backs. And so Dragusin was brought in for the visit of Manchester City on February 1.
Starting out on the left of the back three — this was his first start since January 2025 — Dragusin struggled at first. He never looked comfortable when Rayan Cherki ran at him for City’s first goal. Dragusin’s clumsy clearance led to City scoring their second. But in the second half, when Romero had gone off and Spurs had moved to a back four, Dragusin looked more comfortable, physically standing up to Erling Haaland as Spurs rescued a very creditable point.
On Saturday, Spurs went to Old Trafford, with Van de Ven back in the team, taking Dragusin’s place. But after Romero was sent off for tackle on Casemiro, Dragusin was needed off the bench and he played more than an hour as Spurs tried to stay in the game. Now that Romero is out for the next four games — Newcastle United, Arsenal, Fulham, Crystal Palace — Dragusin will surely be needed again and again.
If Frank decides to stick with the back three on Tuesday night, and given Romero and Danso are both out, the obvious thing would be to have Dragusin, Van de Ven and Palhinha. The only alternative would be to start Archie Gray or the returning Djed Spence at centre-back instead, but Frank has not done so yet this season, and those two will most likely be needed at wing-back.
Clearly, the next few weeks will be pivotal to Spurs’ season, as they try to scramble together enough points to stop having to look nervously over their shoulder in March and April. And Dragusin, having been an almost-forgotten man for almost all of 2025, could now be integral to it.
It feels like another age now but, right up to the moment when Dragusin ruptured the ACL in his right knee, he was hugely important to Tottenham’s fortunes. He started 21 out of 22 games between October 30, 2024 and January 26, 2025. In the one game that he did not start — Chelsea at home on December 8 — he came on for Romero after 15 minutes. And given the injuries to Romero and Van de Ven that dominated last season, Dragusin played most of those games alongside either Gray or Ben Davies. And the ACL injury only came when Dragusin replaced Van de Ven at half-time of a Europa League dead rubber against Elfsborg.
It was a long road back to the first team for Dragusin. He has always been obsessive about gym, food, diet and sleep, even by the standards of modern footballers. His only real hobby is chess. During the course of his rehab, he had to be even more disciplined. When the rest of his team-mates were out partying to celebrate the Europa League triumph last May, Dragusin was still making sure to be back in the gym first thing the next morning. He always pushed himself as hard as he could. Less than 10 months after the injury, he played 45 minutes of a behind-closed-doors friendly against Leyton Orient. James Maddison, recovering from ACL surgery of his own, was there to cheer his team-mate on, so impressed with the way he has fought back to fitness.
It is two years now since Tottenham convinced Dragusin to leave Genoa for north London, and to turn down Bayern Munich. He has had some good moments and some bad ones since then, with obvious upsides and downsides to his game. But the next few months could turn out to be his most important at Spurs so far. Which is not something that people would have predicted until very recently.