Jermain Defoe names former teammate as better than Max Dowman as a youngster

Arsenal wonderkid Max Dowman has earned a lot of attention for his performances as a teenager, but Jermain Defoe reckons a former teammate remains the best 15-year-old he has ever seen on a football pitch.

Dowman made his Premier League debut at 15 and has now made 15 first team appearances for the Gunners, despite not turning 17 until the end of December.

He scored twice in a Carabao Cup win over Ipswich Town earlier this month, sparking great excitement about his progress among both Arsenal and England fans.

Defoe is very impressed, but thinks his former West Ham and England teammate Joe Cole remains the best player he has ever watched at 15 years old.

‘When I was a youth player, I heard a lot about this kid called Joe Cole,’ Defoe said on William Hill’s The Warm Up.

‘I remember there was a lot of noise around the East End about me and Leon Knight when we were youth players. They used to call us [Dwight] Yorke and [Andy] Cole – he scored a lot of goals in his district and so did I, then we came together, but I kept hearing a lot about this Joe Cole kid.

‘I always thought me and Knighty were the main ones, but the first time I saw Joe Cole, I was like, “I’ve never seen anything like this before”.

‘Even now, with all the kids in the current academies, Mikey Moore comes close, then obviously you’ve got Max Dowman, but as a young 14-15-year-old, I’ve never seen anything like Joe Cole. He was quicker with the ball than without. He was just amazing.’

Defoe and Cole went on to have superb careers, especially Cole who would win three Premier League titles with Chelsea and 56 England caps.

With 57 caps to his name, Defoe just pipped his old teammate on that front, but never won the Premier League, FA Cup or European honours.

Knight was very highly regarded as he came through the youth ranks at Chelsea and won England caps at youth level, but never made a breakthrough at Premier League level.

The best spell of his career was in the second tier with Brighton, where he scored 35 goals in 110 league outings from 2003-06.

Dowman is hoping for more first team opportunities with Arsenal, but manager Mikel Arteta has not ruled out allowing him to leave on loan to get more game time elsewhere.

‘We will evaluate every six months where we are and what is the best thing for him to do and then make the right decision,’ Arteta said of the teenage talent.

‘It depends on a lot of factors. What he needs, and what the team needs as well, the availability we have in the squad, the minutes that he is playing and the qualities of those minutes.

‘We have to be open, but now the focus is to be here and to impact the team.’

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