“No 7! No 7! Can we have your shirt please?”

Those high-pitched cries felt like the soundtrack to the evening at a stadium on the outskirts of London on Saturday as a group of young children constantly pleaded with Arsenal’s right winger to hand over his jersey.

The venue was Meadow Park, home of non-League Boreham Wood, and the player in question was Max Dowman.

Playing three years above his age, Dowman was making his FA Youth Cup debut against Queens Park Rangers – a goalscoring debut, too. In September, he made his UEFA Youth League debut against Atalanta and, at the age of 14 years, eight months and 19 days, became the youngest player ever to score in the competition. In between, Dowman made his first appearance for Arsenal’s under-21s – a boy against men.

Perhaps there would have been a Premier League debut as well this season but for the rules and regulations getting in the way. You need to be at least an under-16 (15 years of age by August 31, 2024 for the current season) to appear in the English top flight, which isn’t the case everywhere else. In theory, Dowman could play in La Liga now.

“At the moment, with all the legislation, there are restrictions for your age — something that in other countries you don’t even mention,” Arsenal’s manager Mikel Arteta said this week when asked about the possibility of Dowman getting some first-team minutes. “We’ll have to wait and see. But he’s taking very fast steps because every time you put him at a different level he overcomes that hurdle pretty quickly.”

Get ready to feel old. Dowman was born in 2009 — just. He celebrated his 15th birthday on New Year’s Eve, which means — and this part of his story is easy to overlook when you focus on his football journey — that he is currently in Year 10 at school and won’t be sitting his GCSE exams until the summer after next. It will be another two years before Dowman can drive a car in England and three years before he can buy a beer.

In other words, he is a gifted young footballer who plays with a maturity beyond his years but, ultimately, is still a teenage kid — and that adds an extra layer of responsibility to how you write about him.

Those bursts of speed with the ball glued to his boot, his lovely knack of dropping his shoulder and gliding in off the right flank to shoot (or score, in the case of Saturday), the eye-of-the needle passes that he saw and you didn’t, and the way that he receives so naturally with the outside of his left foot before spinning away from opponents… it would be easy to make comparisons with players X, Y and Z. But it would also be silly to do that.

Dowman playing for England U17 against Belgium U17 in November (Neil Baynes – The FA/The FA via Getty Images)

What we can say without getting carried away is that Dowman has huge potential and that seeing him running with the ball on Saturday, leaving a trail of QPR players in his wake at times, took your breath away — even if you were supporting Arsenal’s opponents.

“Oh, Jesus,” said the voice in the row in front as Dowman set off on another of his trademark surges in the second half.

Remarkably, Dowman trained alongside him as a 14-year-old at Arsenal — Gabriel Jesus, that is. Indeed, at an age when his peers are kicking a ball about in the playground before double maths, Dowman has been wowing Arsenal’s first-team squad with his ability.

“Some of the things that he does in training are unbelievable,” Arteta said on Tuesday, after Dowman took part in Arsenal’s session prior to their Champions League game against Dinamo Zagreb. “He’s a player with a huge talent.”

Reporting twice a week to London Colney (the home of Arsenal’s under-18s, under-21s and first team) as part of a bespoke development programme that includes one-to-one sessions, Dowman has been around Arteta’s squad for a while now.

Dowman turns away from Jorginho in Arsenal training (Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

At some point in the near future — and it’s surely just a question of when — the accelerated pathway that Dowman is on will culminate in a senior debut at Arsenal and see him join up permanently with Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly, who are still young enough to play in the FA Youth Cup this season but have both flown the under-18 nest to become regular members of the first-team squad.

That isn’t hyperbole in relation to Dowman. It’s just a logical progression for someone who featured for Arsenal under-18s when he was 13 and became the club’s youngest-ever under-21 player at the age of 14. In fact, pretty much from the moment he walked through the door at Arsenal at the age of four, Dowman has been playing in advance of his years. Even at international level, Dowman plays two years above his age for England Under-17s.

Rice and Dowman in Arsenal training on January 21 (Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

Without seeing Dowman play, the natural assumption would be that he is a powerful early developer, as is often the case with teenagers who are fast-tracked through the academy age groups. Dowman is that to a point — he’s a superb athlete, for sure — but he doesn’t thrive just because of his physicality. His acceleration is a big asset but his exceptional technical ability, and the intelligence with which he plays and sees the game, really stand out.

“Please go online and check out this kid,” Rio Ferdinand said on his YouTube channel in November. “He was 14, I saw him coaching 18 and 19-year-olds on the pitch when he was playing with them. Bad player (which in this context actually means good player).”

Those internet showreels of Dowman are jaw-dropping at times, especially given the age disparity, and give you an insight into what all the fuss is about. He’s capable of playing in multiple positions (many in the game think Dowman will end up more centrally, as a No 8 or a No 10), has a lovely range of passing, dribbles beautifully and scores freely.

Dowman in action in the Youth Champions League against Sporting CP (David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

At the same time, there’s nothing quite like seeing a player perform live. You get to take in the bigger picture that the video highlights don’t show, including how a player interacts with his team-mates and his coach, the positions they take up on the pitch when they don’t have the ball at their feet, and how they deal with moments of adversity.

Early in the second half on Saturday, after Dowman skipped away from an opponent on the touchline, another QPR player came across to make a robust challenge from the side. It was a fair tackle — he took the ball — but it was full-blooded too and he cleaned Dowman out in the process.

One of the other QPR players revelled in the moment — something that’s going to happen. It’s football. Teenage testosterone and all that. Plus, Dowman’s reputation as a rising star precedes him at academy level in particular and that will stir all sorts of emotions in others.

Shirt and shorts covered in mud, Dowman got up, brushed himself down (literally) and didn’t have any issue with the challenge. He seemed less impressed with the reaction elsewhere but dealt with it coolly, calmly waving his finger from a distance a few moments later and saying nothing. Others — and that includes players twice his age — might have been rattled and lost their focus.

That wasn’t the case with Dowman, whose talking was done with his boots. He never stopped showing for the ball across 136 minutes of football (it was a long night with extra time) and, not surprisingly, his Arsenal team-mates kept giving it to him.

With a little over 20 minutes of normal time remaining and Arsenal trailing 2-1, Dowman pounced on a defensive mistake, dummied to shoot, shifted inside to open up the angle on his left foot and drilled home the equaliser. The outcome felt inevitable from the moment he picked up the ball.

An important equaliser from Dowman 🪄#AFCU18 | #FAYouthCup pic.twitter.com/TlEtsTnchu

— Arsenal Academy (@ArsenalAcademy) January 18, 2025

He also delivered an intelligent pass to release Dan Casey in the inside right channel to cross for Arsenal’s third goal on a night when 18-year-old Emmerson Sutton scored an impressive hat-trick for QPR.

Probably the overriding impression after watching Dowman is how totally at ease he is with a ball at his feet. He never looked remotely flustered in possession, even when taking the ball under pressure deep inside his own half, and those levels of confidence and self-belief manifested themselves in other ways too.

When the Arsenal players gathered in a huddle at the end of extra time and their coach Adam Birchall asked who wanted to take a penalty, Dowman’s hand went straight up in the air. Arsenal missed their first spot kick but Dowman scored their second and, following some heroics from their goalkeeper Jack Porter, they triumphed to set up a fifth-round tie against Fulham.

Dowman celebrates with goalkeeper Porter after Arsenal went through on penalties (Alex Burstow/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

After celebrating with his team-mates at the final whistle, Dowman climbed over the seats in the stand to embrace his family and friends. He was still wearing full kit, including the No 7 shirt that most people in the stadium — not just the children who wanted to take home a souvenir — had their eyes on all night.

(Alex Burstow/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)