The arrival of Ivan Perisic at Tottenham this week could end up being a crucial factor in driving Ryan Sessegnon's career to new heights with the club.
Perisic will travel to Hotspur Way this week to complete a medical and finalise what is believed to be a £98,000 a week, two-year free transfer to Tottenham after telling Inter Milan that he does not plan to renew his contract with them. The 33-year-old will bring with him a wealth of experience, having won the Champions League, the Serie A title under Antonio Conte and the Bundesliga title with both Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, as well as domestic cup triumphs with four different clubs.
Perisic scored 10 goals and provided nine assists in 49 matches for Inter Milan last season, showing no signs of slowing down across almost 4,000 minutes of football. Conte sees Perisic as being a crucial cog in improving the squad's mentality in the big moments next season and the Croatian is a firm believer in the Italian's coaching methods. He played as a left winger under Conte at Inter and can also play as a conventional winger, or even alongside the striker if required.
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There will also be another big role for the experienced wide man as both Conte and Spurs' managing director of football Fabio Paratici believe that Perisic can help mentor and push on 21-year-old Sessegnon to develop as the wing-back duo share the large amount of matches on offer next season with Spurs' return to the Champions League.
Conte has high hopes for Sessegnon if the England U21 international can get a good full pre-season under his belt and steer clear of further hamstring woes.
Sessegnon joined Tottenham for £30m in the summer of 2019 from Fulham, with Josh Onomah heading in the opposite direction. His Spurs career has been stop-start due to different hamstring injuries, plus a successful loan season in the Bundesliga at Hoffenheim. However, in the second half of this season, he emerged as Conte's first choice on the left and earned a run of starts as well as big performances against champions Manchester City and challengers Liverpool.
Conte told football.london this season that Sessegnon could become an important player for club and country.
"Sess in my vision has all the possibility to become an important player. First of all he is young and has in front of him a lot of years. He is strong physically and fast, has a good engine, a resilience," he said "He has good quality. Sometimes I think he feels a bit of pressure, but with me he played important games, against Liverpool, against Chelsea, against City.
"It means I trust him. If you remember in the last game I changed the system, but only for this, I took him off after 30 minutes. I explained it was a tactical situation, but we are talking about another player that if he works and you have patience to work with him he is another player that can become an important player, also for England, the national team, but the first person that has to be convinced is himself. I trust him in the same way I trust all the players."
Perisic is a perfect example of a player who won over Conte with his desire to learn and adapt with the work rate he put in after returning from a loan move to Bayern to become a key part in Inter's title-winning team.
"We sent Perisic to Bayern because he was not prepared to do the defending work I had asked for. He returned with a different mentality," Conte said last year. "I asked him the same things as last season, but he showed that he has extraordinary characteristics and needs to believe in himself more. The moment he started doing that, he started to play. He can be even more decisive."
He added back then: "When I came to Inter Milan in the summer of 2019, my initial idea was that Perisic was an offensive defender because I know he has the characteristics of doing this. The coach can have all kinds of ideas, but he needs the players’ willingness to cooperate with his hard work. He was loaned to Bayern and came back with a different mentality.
"Perisic is an excellent player with outstanding physical strength. He is good at beating [his man]. He has the ability to play one-on-one. I need Perisic like this. He will stay because he has quality."
Wing-backs are vital to Conte's system and the Italian wants Sessegnon to be even braver on the ball when attacking, trust his body and push himself towards more goals and assists next season for Tottenham and having Perisic to learn from could be vital to his progression.
Tottenham are expected to listen to offers this summer for Sergio Reguilon, who was unavailable for the final month of the season with a groin strain. The 25-year-old fell behind Sessegnon in the pecking order in the second half of the campaign and with the payment for his £28million transfer from Real Madrid in 2020 believed to be due this summer, Spurs are looking to offset that by accepting similar offers from interested clubs. That way, with the free transfer of Perisic, they will have raised extra funds to put into other areas of the team.
