Max Dowman is the youngest goalscorer in Premier League history, the youngest player to start a Premier League match, and the youngest player ever to win the competition. He achieved all three before his seventeenth birthday, which is still three months away. This season he has played nine minutes of league football. Both of those sentences are true, and the gap between them is the most deliberate thing any English club is doing with a teenager right now. (Figures as of 6 October 2026.)
Three Records, One Season
16y 73d
Youngest PL Scorer
Against Everton, 14 March 2026
16y 144d
Youngest PL Starter
Against Crystal Palace, 24 May 2026
16y 139d
Youngest PL Winner
Arsenal, 2025-26
9
Minutes
Premier League football this season, as of 6 October 2026
What He Has Already Done
A list this long usually belongs to someone with a career behind them.
Dowman became Arsenal's youngest ever starter at fifteen, in October 2025. He made his Champions League debut against Slavia Prague that November. In March he scored against Everton to become the youngest goalscorer the Premier League has had. In May he started against Crystal Palace and took the youngest-starter record as well, and when Arsenal finished the season as champions he became the youngest player ever to win the thing.
He was born on 31 December 2009. Every one of those records was set by a sixteen-year-old, and two of them still stand to a player who has not yet had a seventeenth birthday.
The Ipswich Brace, and the Name It Put Him Next To
Two goals in a 4-2 win in the Carabao Cup third round, and a comparison nobody makes lightly.
In September he scored twice at Ipswich Town — and became only the second sixteen-year-old to score a brace for a Premier League club. The first was Wayne Rooney, for Everton, in 2002.
That is the sort of sentence that ends careers as often as it starts them, and Arsenal know it. Mikel Arteta's response to the performance was not celebration. It was a public insistence that the club must remain extremely careful with him, and that his time will come.
Max Dowman is not in EA FC 27. The game launched on 25 September, and EA's age rules keep him out until he turns seventeen on 31 December — he is expected in a later update. Cavan Sullivan, who turns seventeen three days after the launch, got his first card the same week: 67. Two players born three months apart, and only one of them has a number. Neither is a judgement on the player. The card follows the calendar, not the football.
Arsenal, born 31 Dec 2009
- League minutes this season: 9
- Senior output: three Premier League records
- Player card: none — not until he turns seventeen
- Club's approach: protect, restrict, wait
- Next step: minutes, when Arteta decides
Philadelphia Union, born 28 Sep 2009
- League minutes this season: a regular starter
- Senior output: 19 goal contributions (7 goals, 12 assists) in MLS, as of 30 September 2026
- Player card: 67, his first, in EA FC 27
- Club's approach: play him every week
- Next step: Manchester City, September 2027
Why Nine Minutes Is the Interesting Number
Restriction is a strategy, not an accident.
Nine minutes is not a player being overlooked. Dowman has already proved he can score in the Premier League and start in it; the question Arsenal are answering is not whether he is good enough but what happens to a sixteen-year-old who plays too much too soon. The Carabao Cup is where they let him off the leash, and he responded with two goals and a Rooney comparison, which will have confirmed both the promise and the reason for the caution.
Sullivan's club took the opposite view and the results are also good. There is no settled answer here. There is a seventeen-year-old in Philadelphia playing every week and a sixteen-year-old in London playing almost never, and in three years we will be told that whichever one worked was obvious all along.
Quick Reference
How old is Max Dowman?
Sixteen. He was born on 31 December 2009 and turns seventeen at the end of this year.
What records does he hold?
Youngest goalscorer, youngest starter and youngest title winner in Premier League history, plus Arsenal's youngest ever starter.
Is he in EA FC 27?
Not yet. EA's age rules keep him out until he turns seventeen on 31 December, and he is expected to be added in a later update.
How much has he played this season?
Nine minutes of Premier League football, plus a two-goal appearance in the Carabao Cup.
“Arsenal have a sixteen-year-old who holds three Premier League records and plays nine minutes a season. That is not indecision. That is the most expensive kind of patience there is.”
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