Shamrock Rovers have signed current Estonia international Markus Poom on a season long loan from Flora Tallinn.
The midfielder is the son of former Derby County, Sunderland, Arsenal and Watford goalkeeper Mart Poom, who was also Estonia captain after a 120-cap career.
Rovers were in the market for another midfielder after Chris McCann’s departure while Viktor Serdeniuk’s short-term deal expired.
Poom, 23, was in the Flora Tallinn squad when the reigning Estonian champions dumped the Hoops out of Europe in 2021 at the playoff stage.
Hoops boss Stephen Bradley said: of the 13-time capped international “We really like his attributes and how he plays the game.
“Markus would tell you that he favours a number 8 position as a box-to-box midfielder, but we’ve seen him playing deep-lying and as a 10, so he’s played different roles.
“What I think you’ll see is that he’s an all-rounder that can do everything. It’s just about getting him in and getting him used to the way we play as quickly as possible.”
“We’ve watched him now for a long period of time, before we played Flora Tallinn when we would have watched a lot of them.
“He’s a player we really liked. We’ve had quite a bit of contact with the club over the last number of years and we’re delighted to get the opportunity to work with him now.”
Poom is eager to get up to speed with his new club and was in action as recently as last Thursday’s when he came on in Estonia’s 1-0 win over Finland.
Poom said: “I’m really happy to join Rovers. I”m good at linking up play, driving with the ball and my range of passing is probably my strongest quality.
“My father was a major influence on me as he made it in the big leagues in England and also captained Estonia. To have that motivation every day really drives me on.”
Poom, who was born in Derby, added: “I’m really looking forward to seeing the fans and the atmosphere. I’ve seen it online and it looks electric.”
The midfielder spent his youth career at Nomme United before joining Flora Tallinn in 2016 and he has scored 21 goals for them in 150 league appearances over seven years.
Poom was an unused sub in those Europa Conference League games against Rovers but featured in all six group games against Gent, Partizan and Anorthosis.
“We’ve been enquiring about him for quite some time but in the last six to eight weeks we’ve known that it might be a possibility to get him in,” said Bradley.
“Once we felt that the club was willing to do a deal with us, Stephen McPhail worked extremely hard to go and make it happen.
“You need everything to fall into place and there’s so many factors that go into a signing like this [from abroad].
“It can be difficult, but we know his level of ability because we saw it first-hand. We’ve followed him for quite some time and everything else has worked out.
Bradley added: “He has a lot of experience, when you look at the games he’s played and the level he’s played at throughout the years.
“He brings a lot of high-level experience, so he’ll definitely add to the group in that regard.
“I know from having conversations with him that he knows how we play. He obviously knows from when we played them and he’s seen quite a bit of us
“Hopefully that process doesn’t take too long, once we get him in the building.”
