David Raya’s had the pleasure of watching both Max Dowman and Lamine Yamal’s brilliance up close and personal, but Arsenal’s goalkeeper doesn’t want to compare the two and instead insists what they are doing is “incredible”.
Last year’s Premier League Golden Glove award winner is Dowman’s team-mate at Arsenal and plays alongside Yamal for Spain at international level.
Few people are better positioned to offer an educated opinion on the pair. Despite Raya believing Dowman and Yamal have contrasting qualities, there’s one thing the young gem’s share.
“They’re alike in that every time they step on the pitch they enjoy playing and are always playing with a smile,” Raya told . “It seems like they’re playing at school. They go out there to play and to enjoy themselves.
“It’s clear that they want to compete and help the team, but that naturalness to play football at that age—to the calibre they’re playing at—is incredible. They do it with an incredible abandon.”
At just 15-years-old, Dowman recently became the youngest ever Champions League debutant, bumping Yamal down to third on that list.
The incredible rise of Barcelona’s No. 10 over the past two years is well documented and he’d broken countless records before turning 18 this summer.
Yamal is—incredibly—three years Dowman’s senior. The young Arsenal playmaker has a long way to go to match Yamal’s tender-age achievements and still only has five appearances for Mikel Arteta’s side. Nevertheless, that’s more than Yamal had at that point in his career.
