Ryan Sessegnon has revealed he spoke to a psychologist to help overcome a difficult start to life at Tottenham.
The 21-year-old was one of the most sought-after youngsters in Europe when he joined Spurs in the summer of 2019 for £25million, but his move has not gone to plan as injuries and several changes of manager have stopped him making any impact.
He spent last season on loan at Bundesliga club Hoffenheim and benefitted from regular game time before more injury problems struck early this season.
After making his first Premier League appearance since January 2020 as a second-half substitute against Leeds at the weekend, he will start Spurs’ Europa Conference League game with NS Mura on Thursday and hopes to impress new boss Antonio Conte.
Sessegnon said he never thought his future laid elsewhere and that he sought help to get him through a tough time.
“That never crossed my mind (to leave),” he said. “I knew I would have to go out on loan which I did and played a few games and came back with a lot of confidence but the injury happened again.
“But never did it cross my mind that I would have to leave the club.
“Of course it has been very tough, everyone knows that. People very close to me know how much it affected me a little bit, but in terms of confidence, I think that is behind me now.
“The good people around me helped, family and friends, and speaking to people who are close to me.
“I did actually get a little bit of help one-on-one from someone which was very good for me. Other than that it was about having the people pushing me every day and bringing the positive energy I needed. The psychology side of it.”
With Conte deploying a 3-4-3 formation, Sessegnon has the chance to battle for the left wing-back spot.
“I think for me it’s massive,” he said. “Like you say, to really kickstart my career as it has been a very stop-start situation since I’ve been at the club for various reasons.
“It’s a big opportunity for me to go out and play and I’m looking forward to it. For the team, of course, we need to win the game for us to qualify.
“The formation is perfect for me, to play on that left wing-back position is probably where I feel most comfortable playing and it suits me as well.
“That is the position I started at Fulham as everyone knew I was a left-back. And then got pushed farther forward so when you combine the two (when) I can play as a wing-back, it is perfect.
“It’s a time when I really need to kick on and show what I can do.”
His confidence will be boosted by the fact that Conte seemingly rates him.
“Ryan in my opinion has great potential. We have seen in the past he suffered a lot of injuries,” the Italian said.
“Now we’re trying to work in the right way with him. With this type of player, it’s very important during training to push your engine to a high level and have good training sessions.
“In this way you’re trained during the game to bring high intensity and level of performance. We’re working with him for the past two weeks, now he’s ready to start the game tomorrow.
“And yeah, I can’t wait to see his performance because he’s a talented player, very young with great space for improvement.
“Now it’s important to give him regularity to try to avoid injury and give him the chance to be available for every game.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here