Ryan Sessegnon is hoping he and twin brother Steven will give his proud family a double celebration on Saturday night.
The Fulham full-back has admired his brother’s starring role as the England under-17s surged to tomorrow’s World Cup final in India and hopes to do his bit by winning a crucial three points for his club against Bolton Wanderers in their Championship clash at Craven Cottage. Sessegnon, who tasted European glory with the Under-17s in the summer, told Fulham’s website just how special Steven’s success has been, especially as he had to fight his way into the England starting line-up at the start of the tournament:
It’s a great achievement. Our mum, dad, the whole family is very proud of him, and hopefully he can go one step further and win the trophy. It’s crazy, it’s been a great year for us, for English football. Hopefully managers in the Premier League and Championship can use that and bring these young English players into their first teams. Obviously I won’t be able to watch the final because of the Bolton game, but I’ll make sure my mum records it!
If any club manager needs guidance as to the value of trusting their young starlets with a place in the first team, they only need to call Slavisa Jokanovic. The Serbian head coach gave Sessegnon his senior debut against Leyton Orient last season and the teenager went on to become an integral part of the side that got so close to winning promotion to the Premier League through the players. He is now one of the first names on Jokanovic’s teamsheet, which is why he isn’t in India on international duty with his brother.
Sessegnon’s attention will be firmly on returning to winning ways after a disappointing defeat at Villa Park last weekend. He certainly won’t be taking bottom of the table Bolton Wanderers lightly after they beat Sheffield Wednesday and drew with QPR and has dismissed talk of this being an easy three points for the home side.
No game in this league is an easy game, and we’ll be taking Saturday very seriously. We’ll be looking to bring the game to them, and hopefully creating a lot more than we did against Aston Villa.
We’ve worked on Bolton, we know what they’re about. We expect them to come out and press us, but we’re used to that. We had that here when we played Preston recently, who came out flying, but as the Gaffer says, teams can’t come and press for every minute of the game, so there will be times where there will be space for us to play.
