The course of a few brief days last week told us much about the blizzard of hype that Max Dowman is up against and how brands grazing off football are seeking to monetise him.
Adidas are selling some new boots with Lionel Messi’s name on them and their promotional campaign included the Argentine’s list of his top ten footballers under the age of 21, with Dowman among them. There were no quotes from Messi saying why he liked the 16-year-old Arsenal player and certainly no spoken words.
But the PR story flew, Dowman’s manager Mikel Arteta found himself asked about it at his press conference, and the name of the boots was sent around the world. It’s how football works.
This contributed to something of a Dowman onslaught when Arteta sat down last Friday to discuss Arsenal’s home match against Everton. The fixture was the one in which the teenager announced himself in March, becoming the youngest goalscorer in both Premier League and the club’s own history.
Arteta found himself fielding so many questions about Dowman, his potential, why he hadn’t played him so much, why hype brought dangers, that he had to draw a line under things. ‘Yes, very exciting! Enough! Enough, OK?’ he said.
The environment was rather less benign on the windswept Fylde coast at Fleetwood on Tuesday but the self-same hype revealed itself, albeit in a far less laudatory way.
Mikel Arteta has a word with Max Dowman as he trudges down the tunnel following his red card at Fleetwood Town
Dowman had fallen for the oldest trick in the book when he lashed out at Harrison Neal
Dowman was sent off, Arsenal were bundled out of the Carabao Cup by the League Two side and that turned out to be TV gold for Sky Sports, who unexpectedly found their C-listers contributing to a successful new flank in the Dowman narrative.
Arteta had given Dowman a look like thunder and uttered something to him as he trudged towards the dressing room. ‘You have to remember he is 16 years of age – he’s a kid,’ opined Sky’s former Arsenal midfielder Paul Merson in the studio, declaring that he ‘didn’t like’ this.
Jobi McAnuff, an ex-Orient and Watford player sitting beside Merson, was of the same mind. ‘I didn’t like the reaction at all,’ McAnuff said. ‘Dowman is potentially the future of Arsenal. Arteta didn’t get that quite right.’
The condemnation of Arteta and outpouring of national empathy for Dowman had made this a matter of some debate.
It was the results of lip-reading specialist, Nicola Hickling, which finally provided some sense and perspective, when they were published.
Arteta’s actual words to Dowman? ‘Get to the dressing room Max.’ A little like that ‘get to your room’ which some of us have perhaps tried out, to no beneficial effect whatsoever, on our own children.
The manager’s response was, of course, entirely proportionate, particularly since Arteta had warned Dowman in advance that he would be subjected to the kind of cynical act of incitement from Fleetwood’s Harrison Neal which saw him dismissed.
The Spaniard’s usual reaction when one of his players is sent off is to ignore them flatly as they leave, putting them in the kind of deep freeze that makes you shudder for the consequences in the sanctuary of the dressing room. This actually felt kinder.
The notion that Arteta was at fault for scowling at a young, dismissed player is woke punditry gone mad. If Dowman wants to play senior football, then he will be needing to grow up fast
The notion that Arteta was at fault for scowling at a young, dismissed player is, to coin an expression, woke punditry gone mad. If Dowman wants to play senior football, then he will be needing to grow up fast.
He was subjected to the oldest trick in the book – provocation – and fell for it hook, line and sinker, handing Fleetwood an opportunity they gleefully took. Why wouldn’t he be censured – if that dagger of a look of Arteta’s and six subsequent words of instruction really can be described as such?
It’s adulation which managers like Arteta most have to protect players like this against. David Moyes once stated that his job was a ‘one-man battle to protect Wayne Rooney from over-exposure’, when the future England captain was a young tyro at Goodison Park.
While Dowman has appeared in an adidas ad with Ian Wright, Moyes fought to keep Rooney away from early advertisement campaigns and lucrative boot deals, believing that premature commercial exposure would distract him.
But only experience can insulate such prodigies from the harsh realities of the football field and the fact that they will be targeted by their inferiors wherever they go. It is Dowman’s second red card this month.
He was also sent off while representing England Under 19s against the United States in a behind-closed-doors friendly in Marbella, having appeared to kick out at an opponent. Some felt the punishment harsh. There are no conclusions to be drawn.
He is a steely, competitive player, confident with a ball at his feet and unafraid to hold his own against those much older than him, so there will be confrontations and altercations.
He was only 14 when he went face-to-face with a 19-year-old, Afonso Moreira, against Sporting Lisbon Under 19s in 2024, and after some shirt-pulling, the two of them squared up.
Dowman is already a figure of mass interest, and holds three world records as the youngest player to score for Arsenal and in the Premier League, and win the competition
If Dowman makes it to the top, he will look back at the way he was provoked and reacted and reflect that Mikel Arteta taught him something important in Fleetwood
Arsenal academy staff soon took him off because they sensed his aggression may spill over, though it told them he had the necessary fight. His ability to stay on the right side of the line will dictate where his future heads.
Arsenal are appealing Dowman’s dismissal in wet, wild Fylde, which means Dowman may yet feature for Arsenal on Sunday at Liverpool.
But if he ever makes it to the proper international stage, perhaps to face the dark arts of Argentina or Italy in front of the world, he will look back at the way he was provoked and reacted and reflect that Mikel Arteta taught him something important on that night in Fleetwood.
