Max Dowman has broken several milestones already this season. He was Arsenal\u2019s second youngest-ever player, behind Ethan Nwaneri, when he made his first-team debut as a substitute against Leeds United in August, and he became the club\u2019s youngest ever starter at 15 years, 302 days when he made his full debut in October. This week he became the youngest player in Champions League history after appearing in Arsenal\u2019s win over Slavia Prague.<\/p>\n
The club are managing his progression with clear off-field safeguards. The Gunners are hopeful of securing Dowman\u2019s long-term future, with scholar status to be followed by a first professional contract when he turns 17 at the end of 2026. There is reported interest from rival clubs, but he remains an Arsenal supporter.<\/p>\n
Dowman is still a legal child and remains in his final year of mandatory UK schooling. He will sit his GCSE exams next May and June. BBC Sport notes that Dowman has \u201cstudy time\u201d built into his schedule at Arsenal\u2019s training ground to ensure his education is given the necessary attention.<\/p>\n
Practical welfare measures are in place. Declan Rice has been asked to serve as a mentor and the youngster is provided a dedicated one-on-one member of the team\u2019s security personnel when the squad travel to and from matches. As a minor, he does not change in the same room as Arsenal\u2019s senior players and will dress in a separate space before joining the squad for tactical instructions and team talks from Mikel Arteta and the coaching staff. The club note that every member of the group has their own room for hotel stays, so no extra arrangements are required there.<\/p>\n
Arteta\u2019s approach has precedent. He used Ethan Nwaneri at a similar age and integrated Bukayo Saka into the first team soon after arriving five years ago. For the manager, age is secondary to ability. In Arteta\u2019s view, Dowman is already at the level to command a place in the group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arsenal have put education, security and specialist routines in place to protect 15-year-old Dowman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[1047,1233,1232],"class_list":["post-4285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","tag-champions-league","tag-safeguarding","tag-youth-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4285","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=4285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}