England Under-19s star Ryan Sessegnon believes his experience of first-team football has helped him adapt to the rigours of tournament life.
The Fulham winger has been a key figure for the Young Lions at the Euro Finals in Georgia, with his brace against Germany on Sunday taking his tournament tally to three and helping England into the semi-finals.
Given the 17-year-old is still young enough to feature in the U19s for the next two seasons, it’s been a remarkable campaign for Roehampton-born Sessegnon.
He made the breakthrough into the first-team squad at Craven Cottage at the start of last season and went on to make 30 appearances for the west London outfit, as well as helping England into the Euro Finals.
And he believes featuring regularly at that level has allowed him to develop and progress, which resulted in him signing his first professional contract with the Cottagers before linking up with the England squad.
“I’m enjoying the challenge, when you’re playing against older players, they challenge you physically and mentally,” said Sessegnon, after the 4-1 win over Germany.
“I think playing in the Championship, where it’s very physical, and then coming here helps you because you’re used to it, playing for your club.
“I’m enjoying myself in this team, we’re playing with a lot of confidence and we have a lot of good players in the team.
“The gaffer lets us express ourselves, so that’s good.
“I was just happy to get it [the contract] over the line before I flew out here so it was done and I could just focus on England.”
The victory over Germany saw the Young Lions finish in top spot of Group B to progress into the last four, where they will face Czech Republic in Tbilisi on Wednesday.
And Sessegnon revealed the squad were always confident that they could get a result going into the game and now have the ambition to go further.
“I think it was a good performance from the team and an important win,” added Sessegnon, who also played in the U17 Euro Finals with England last summer and could have featured in that tournament again this season.
“We were confident going into the game, but it was an all-round good team performance.
“We just wanted to focus on winning, a point wasn’t in our minds, we wanted to get the three points and top the group.
“We’ll go into the [semi-final] game with confidence and hopefully we can reach the final. We’ll be doing everything we can in our power to win the game.
“If we focus on ourselves, we have plenty of confidence. We need to be clinical and take our chances.
“We’re always going to create chances with this team and I think if we’re clinical in the final third, then we can win.”
