Max Dowman made more history on Friday night, becoming the first 16-year-old to feature for England men\u2019s U-21s. In doing so, he moved ahead of Jude Bellingham as the youngest player to represent the Young Lions, although the occasion was not entirely straightforward for the teenager.<\/p>\n
Dowman had earned his place in Lee Carsley\u2019s squad after impressing Ben Futcher during the extended fall internationals, even with a red card that was viewed as a warning sign for his temperament at club level. Against Portugal at Bristol City\u2019s Ashton Gate, he was introduced for the final half-hour as part of a quintuple substitution, but the changes could not prevent a 1-0 defeat.<\/p>\n
Even so, Carsley was clearly encouraged by what he saw from the Arsenal youngster. \u201cI thought he was outstanding when he came on tonight,\u201d the manager gushed. \u201cI thought all of the subs made a real impact. I thought Max was unlucky not to get an assist, he made a great pass to Mikey Moore.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe took up some really good positions, both in the 10 and out wide, he\u2019s got a big future ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
England will head to the U-21 European Championship next summer as defending champions, having lifted the trophy in 2025 and 2023. With a friendly against France still to come on Monday, followed by March\u2019s fixtures, Dowman has only a short run of games to strengthen his case for a place in the tournament squad.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve only got three games left before the Euros,\u201d the former senior England interim manager warned. \u201cSo it\u2019s important that he puts himself in the shop window to be on the plane. It\u2019s important that he keeps playing well, getting minutes, showing a really good attitude, like he has done.\u201d<\/p>\n
For all the records already attached to his name, the switch to U-21 level has likely closed the door on another, at least for now. Dowman will not become England\u2019s youngest senior men\u2019s international unless there is an unexpected change of plan from Thomas Tuchel this month, and even then he would age beyond Theo Walcott\u2019s benchmark of 17 years and 75 days before March\u2019s fixtures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dowman set a new England U21 age record, but a senior landmark is no longer within reach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22463,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[59,178,180],"class_list":["post-22464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","tag-featured","tag-friendly","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}