YOUNG attacking midfielder Romain Esse made his senior debut for Millwall in Saturday’s 1-1 draw against Brondby.
The 17-year-old has featured regularly for the Lions under-18 side but hadn’t played a second of men’s football before this weekend. As a result, it was a surprise to see his name in the starting lineup to face the former Danish champions.
Esse certainly impressed in his 45 minutes on the pitch, hitting the post from Scott Malone’s short free-kick in the Lions’ best chance of the first half. Manager Gary Rowett was similarly enthused by his performance, explaining that the youngster had been training with the first-team since the start of the World Cup break.
“We’ve watched him closely over the last few months, we’ve been aware of him a bit longer than that,” he said after the draw.
“We made the decision to bring him up to the first-team to train for the last week or so. He’s done really really well in training.
“I wanted to see him in a good side. He’s got the technical ability, a real nice balance to him, he knows some of the nuances of the game out of possession.
“He’s really comfortable, of course a game like that – if there was a little bit more physicality to the game and a little bit more intensity to the action, then those are going to be things that he might find tough at first.
“But he’s certainly done enough in the training so far to suggest he’s going to have a real big future for this club.
“Out of all of the young players we’ve got, he’s handled some of the situations as well as anyone so I wanted to put him in a good team at the start of the game and just see what he was like.
“He showed some real nice touches, other things he needs to do a little bit better but for a 17-year-old I thought he looked very, very comfortable.”
Photo: Millwall FC