Herson Rodrigues Alves has signed a new contract at Brentford for the 2015/16 season. The 18-year-old signed professional forms in January this year as prior to that, registration difficulties prevented him in playing competitive matches for more than a year.
Speaking about the new deal, which takes him to June 2016, the attacking midfielder was pleased to be putting pen to paper.
“It feels good because I’ve been at the club quite a while now,” said Herson. “It’s a good achievement to get a professional contract.”
Once he was free to play competitive football this year, Herson played nine U18 Professional Development League Two games for Brentford’s Youth Team last season and scored three goals.
He also played three Development Squad matches, scoring once.
“The last six months went quite well as when I first joined I didn’t play enough games,” said Herson. “But now I need to concentrate for next season. When I wasn’t in the squad, I still trained hard but couldn’t play so it was really frustrating.”
The Portuguese-born youngster found the transition to Under-21s football difficult at first but now looks forward to being coached by Development Squad Manager Lee Carsley.
“It was hard,” said Herson. “Even though I trained with them, I had never played with the Under-21s but I got into it [eventually].”
The Development Squad starts pre-season training this Friday and Herson is keen to show not only Lee Carsley what he can do, but also Marinus Dijkhuizen, who was appointed as the Club’s new First Team Head Coach this month.
“Everyone will be working hard to impress the new gaffer,” said Herson.”The Club is moving forward and perhaps we can get promoted to the Premier League.”
You can watch the full interview on Bees Player now.