It was one of those rare moments in a football stadium when you know a goal is going to be scored long before it happens.
The fact that it was a Year 11 schoolkid, aged 16, striding through the centre of the pitch on a Saturday night in north London, towards an unguarded net and in front of 55,000 Arsenal supporters who were bobbing up and down with excitement, made it all the more surreal.
Time momentarily stood still as Max Dowman, a superstar in the making, turned the Emirates Stadium into his playground. The only thing missing was a couple of jumpers for goalposts as he beautifully glided away from two Everton players, leaving one of them on their backside on the halfway line (there’s no shame in that, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall), before sprinting clear.
Men against boys, they say. Well, this was a boy against men.
Vitaliy Mykolenko, Everton’s left-back and 10 years Dowman’s senior, was brushed aside at the beginning of that run after a clever header, followed by a fantastic turn of speed and some dexterous footwork to evade Dewsbury-Hall. The rest was a formality.
“For me, it felt like 45 seconds!” the Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta said, smiling, when asked about a passage of play that will live long in the memory for anyone who was privileged enough to be at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday night.
People were on their feet in the press box, not just in the stands, from the moment that Dowman entered the Everton half. Arsenal’s substitutes leapt from the bench, arms aloft. Gabriel Heinze, the assistant manager, was punching the air before Dowman had even reached the penalty area. And, at the risk of sounding like Kenneth Wolstenholme at Wembley Stadium in 1966, some people (the Arsenal subs) were on the pitch.
Aged 16 years and 73 days, Dowman was on his way to sealing victory for Arsenal and, at the same time, creating history by becoming the Premier League’s youngest goalscorer, eclipsing a record that, like most things in life, was older than him (James Vaughan, aged 16 years and 270 days, for Everton against Crystal Palace back in April 2005, in case you were wondering).
Born on New Year’s Eve in 2009, Dowman isn’t old enough to drive yet, and it will be the best part of another two years before he can buy a beer in England. Every time he is named in Arsenal’s first-team squad, he has to get changed in a separate dressing room because of safeguarding rules. Presumably, he’ll get a mention in the school newsletter next week.
For anyone with kids of Dowman’s age, it’s genuinely hard to get your head around what he’s doing.
In the summer, he’ll be in an exam hall taking his GCSEs. Perhaps he will also be paying a visit to the United States for a six-week-long soccer camp that involves 47 other teams.
It’s hard not to consider that possibility when Dowman has not just the ability — and, my God, he’s got that in abundance — but the temperament, confidence and maturity too, even at this age, to single-handedly alter the course of a football match at the highest level.
Dowman runs to celebrate after scoring Arsenal’s second goal against Everton (Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
Arteta, who admitted that he was still trying to come back down to earth after exploding with joy when Dowman scored, sounded astonished at what he had just witnessed.
“It’s not only the goal that he scored. I think he changed the game,” the Arsenal manager said. “Every time he got the ball, he made things happen. It looked like we were more of a threat. To do that at that age, in this context, with this pressure, it is just not normal.”
Introduced as a second-half substitute at a time when the atmosphere was filled with tension as Arsenal’s supporters became increasingly anxious about the possibility of surrendering two points against a resilient Everton side, Dowman’s performance electrified the crowd.
Incredibly, he had the second-most involvements in attacking sequences in the game, despite the fact that he didn’t enter the pitch until the 74th minute.
That statistic is a measure of Dowman’s impact on a match that had been crying out for a creative spark, as well as the fact that the Arsenal players — and there’s no bigger endorsement than this — kept giving him the ball at every opportunity (he received 17 passes in 23 minutes).
At one stage, Eberechi Eze turned down the chance to shoot and opted to pass to Dowman instead.
Moments later, with little more than a minute of normal time remaining, Dowman picked up the ball close to the right touchline and delivered a terrific inswinging cross that deceived Jordan Pickford, the Everton keeper, and ended up at the feet of Viktor Gyokeres, with the goal at his mercy, after bouncing off Piero Hincapie.
Cue the breakthrough.
That moment would have been more than good enough for Arsenal and Arteta, who had told Dowman to “go and do your thing and win us the game” when he brought him on for Martin Zubimendi — a bold substitution – with a “gut feeling” that the teenager could produce something special.
But Dowman, who has only recently returned to first-team action after suffering an ankle injury in December, wasn’t finished for the evening with that cross. An Everton corner, in the final minute of added time, prompted Pickford to venture forward.
What followed, Arteta said, was one of the best moments that Arsenal have ever experienced at the Emirates. The celebrations, understandably, were wild as Dowman was mobbed.
As for Arteta, he was leaping for joy, literally.
“You turn around and you see the bench and those eyes just with that happiness — that joy that you’re almost not believing what has just happened,” he said.
In some ways, it felt fitting that Everton were the opponents, mindful that back in 2002, on a landmark day at Goodison Park, another 16-year-old wrote his name into the record books by scoring an iconic goal against Arsenal. “Remember the name, Wayne Rooney!” Clive Tyldesley, the television commentator, famously said.
Over the past 16 years @WayneRooney has served up some stunning #PL strikes…
…from introducing himself for @Everton v Arsenal… pic.twitter.com/AvtN2CNuPf
— Premier League (@premierleague) June 28, 2018
Dowman, as crazy as it sounds, may have had an opportunity to break the Premier League goalscoring record last 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 for the current season) to appear in the English top flight, which isn’t the case everywhere else and was a source of frustration for Arsenal and Dowman. In reality, though, that red tape was only delaying the inevitable.
It says everything that Arteta is already facing questions about whether Dowman should be in his starting line-up. “Calm!” the Arsenal manager replied, laughing. “As your colleague (another journalist) said, let’s come down to earth today and enjoy the moment because it was intense and it was worth it, and we’ll see tomorrow.”
As Arteta got up from his chair, still smiling about Dowman’s goal, he was asked whether he would watch Manchester City’s game at West Ham, which was just about kick off.
“Probably, yes,” he said.
An unforgettable evening for Arsenal and Max Dowman was about to get even better.
