The romantic tale of Ryan Sessegnon’s Fulham return

Let me tell you a story, a story that starts on 8 August 2019. (Of course, it really started long before that.) The club confirmed that Ryan Sessegnon was leaving Fulham following our relegation to the Championship, and he would be making a big-money move to Tottenham Hotspur. He was one of our own, a Fulham fan, and nobody begrudged him the move. We knew he deserved to play in the top flight.

Ryan’s career at Spurs has been well-documented. Watching it from the outside was painful, to be honest – despite bright flashes. He scored in the Champions League against Bayern Munich, and netted Spurs’ first goal of the 2022/23 season. I kept a keen eye on his career, hoping that I’d somehow be able to will him towards success (by contrast, I unfollowed Harvey Elliot on Instagram as soon as he jumped to Liverpool). But my praying never seemed to work. When the news broke that Spurs released him last summer, I dared to dream for a moment that one of my favourite players may play for his boyhood club – our club – again. Then, we heard the rumours that he was training with Crystal Palace.

We all remember where we were at 9:55am on 25 July 2024. I was in the office – and by myself, thank goodness, because I was about to bounce around the room and burst into tears. Sessegnon’s return to Fulham had been announced by Fabrizio Romano. Sess was back! There was an aura of concern around the transfer, of course. Sessegnon’s injury record since leaving the club in 2019 was hugely worrying, plus he was our first signing that summer, and everyone was getting nervous about the state of the squad.

I could say now that the rest is history, but it’s not really. When we first saw Sessegnon play in early cup games against Birmingham and Preston, he looked nervous, like he was worried that running around too hard would re-aggravate the injuries that had defined his career away from Fulham. It would be too neat to say that Spurs Away in early December is when we saw a shift, a shift where we saw him begin to play with freedom at long last, even in a tiny, bit-part role off the bench. He was on the pitch as we scored emotional late winners against Newcastle and Chelsea, a true part of those celebrations.

Wolves away on a Tuesday night in February is not necessarily the most appealing fixture. Nonetheless, I was tempted up, and when the line-up dropped at 6:15pm, I realised it was all worth the trip – our starboy, the lad on the back of my shirt this season, had earned his first Premier League start. I can’t really describe the euphoria of the first minute, as Andreas Pereira passed to Ryan Sessegnon and he was straight through on goal – he was making the back of the net ripple. I was both incredibly present and having this insane out-of-body experience as my friends clutched me and I (of course) burst into tears.

We’ve spoken and written a lot on Fulhamish about our inconsistency this season – how dropping points at home to Manchester United, Southampton, Ipswich, Wolves has taken the shine off the campaign, but that’s not what football’s about for me. I can forget them. After Sessegnon’s opener, I confidently told everyone around me that I didn’t care if we lost 10-1, because we’d all experienced this moment together.

At Sunday’s game against Tottenham Hotspur, the lad next to me and I tried some pie-in-the-sky, dream-big thinking before kick-off. What would be the best possible outcome of this game? We agreed: Ryan Sessegnon comes on late on, and scores the winner at the Hammersmith end. A girl can dream, eh? When the board went up for number 30, we caught eyes and shared a joke about it.

Well, you know the rest – a hopeful, looping pass from Bernd Leno lands at the feet of Ben Davies and Ryan Sessegnon. Our starboy shrugs off the Spurs defender. He slides over as he curls the ball into the top corner and the ground erupts. He doesn’t celebrate but it doesn’t matter because Rodrigo Muniz leapfrogs over his shoulders – oh, and we celebrate enough for him in the stands.

Welcome home.