Why Ryan Sessegnon To Tottenham Hotspur Is Written In The Stars

Why Ryan Sessegnon To Tottenham Hotspur Is Written In The Stars
12:20, 06 Dec 2017

Every aspect of Ryan Sessegnon’s hat-trick last month away to promotion-chasing Sheffield United flew in the face of conventional wisdom. There’s his age to begin with: 17-year-olds tend not to take the match-ball home with them in top-level football and indeed the last youngster to do so from the top four tiers was Dele Alli for MK Dons in 2014. Then there’s the Fulham prodigy’s primary stationing at full-back which might occasionally allow a two-goal hero to emerge once every blue moon but three in a game? Never. To put into proper context since the Championship became the Championship in 2004 it has heralded 142 hat-tricks. Not one of them prior to Sessesgnon wore the number three shirt.

That the teenager began his spree with a 25 yarder executed with his weaker foot just tops off an extraordinary achievement by an extraordinary prospect and yet we still haven’t arrived at the most logic-defying detail of them all. When Ryan Sessegnon took to the Bramhall Lane pitch that evening it was to compete in his 50th professional game.

Since the Roehampton born talent was first thrust into the Fulham first team just 81 days after being legally permitted to ride a moped he has been ripping up the record books. His first league goal made him the first ever scorer throughout the divisions to have been born in the 2000s. His winning strike against Cardiff in the FA Cup last January made him the youngest ever scorer in the competition. His eventual and rightful inclusion in the PFA Championship Team of the Year last May made him, well; you know where I’m going with this.

It is not simply landmarks of course why seemingly the whole of football is talking about this superstar in the making. Such has been the youngster’s impact on this exciting, if inconsistent, Fulham side he has found himself deployed in any number of different roles, less for his utilitarian attributes and more to fully benefit from a very special natural talent. For a quarter of his twenty appearances so far this term Sessegnon has proven to be a devastating option out wide and even up front while at left-back he has swiftly established himself as a thoroughly modern exponent of the role, tenacious in retreat and always a willing, jet-heeled support when going forward. It’s led to comparisons being made with Bayern Munich’s David Alaba. It’s led to comparisons being made with pretty much anyone who has made the left flank their own in recent years.

That list includes Gareth Bale and Danny Rose so it is entirely appropriate that the club being persistently linked to Sessegnon is the same institution where each star arrived callow but brilliant as teenagers before gradually establishing themselves as elite talents. In fact it is precisely due to the latter’s ill-judged criticism of Tottenham’s wage ceiling that has seemingly sharpened Mauricio Pochettino’s intent on securing a long-term replacement with Rose’s thorny relationship with his employers increasingly looking beyond repair.

In his place surely will step Sessegnon and the only question remaining is when this might happen. Had Spurs been successful in their tabled £25m bid over the summer the answer would almost certainly be a recalled loan this January but instead Sessegnon showed admirable maturity in choosing to continue his development at Craven Cottage. Instead, he signed his first professional contract back in June – notably with no buy-out clauses inserted - putting to bed the rumours if only temporarily.

A trawl through the transfer gossip sites and tabloid back pages one year ago reveals a plethora of leading clubs reportedly showing a keen interest in locking down one of the most exhilarating discoveries in English football for decades. Now there is only Tottenham with a new story appearing almost on a daily basis.

How much of this is down to joined-up thinking in merging together Spurs’ recent failed attempt, their clear mandate to target young players of promise, and Danny Rose’s fall from grace, is pure conjecture. It’s still hard to shake off the feeling though that Ryan Sessegnon playing at Wembley Stadium under Pochettino in years to come is written in the stars. 

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