One to watch out for in the future? Millwall boss on 17-year-old midfielder making start in friendly draw against Brondby

Gary Rowett was impressed with Romain Esse’s performance in Millwall’s 1-1 draw against Brondby at The Den this afternoon.

The 17-year-old started on the right of midfield and came extremely close to opening the scoring when his free-kick hit the post.

Rowett said: “We’ve watched him closely over the last few months, we’ve been aware of him a bit longer than that. 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 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 he looked very, very comfortable.”