There are very few footballers in the world who can understand what it is like to make your professional debut at 15. To step into the spotlight at such a delicate point of life, to experience the pressure and intensity of top-level sport, is to be subjected to a test that is almost beyond comprehension for children of such an age.
It is the most fortunate quirk of fate, then, that Ethan Nwaneri’s journey at Arsenal has converged with that of Martin Odegaard. Of all the players in the world, Odegaard is perhaps the best-placed to provide Nwaneri with support. The Arsenal captain was only 15 when he became Norway’s youngest international, just as Nwaneri was only 15 when he became the youngest player in Premier League history, in September 2022.
Odegaard knows what it is like to be a teenage sensation. He knows how it feels to go to school the day after playing a match of professional football, to have social media buzzing with your name.
It therefore says plenty about Odegaard’s own experiences, and indeed his leadership at Arsenal, that he has gone out of his way to provide help and guidance to Nwaneri over the past two years. Telegraph Sport understands that Odegaard has made a conscious effort to look out for Nwaneri ever since the academy star, now 17, first arrived in the senior setup.
That mentorship was always going to prove useful for Arsenal at one point, although Mikel Arteta cannot have expected Nwaneri to be needed quite so soon this season. Odegaard’s ankle injury has provided a chance for the teenager to demonstrate his ability and show he is prepared for big-time football.
Against Bolton Wanderers in the League Cup on Wednesday night, Nwaneri did just that. On his first senior start for the club, he scored twice in a 5-1 win and played with a technical class that enchanted the home crowd. “The boy is ready,” said Arteta. “You can tell he is playing without pressure, with confidence.”
‘He is very, very special’
Nwaneri’s ascension to the first team is hardly a surprise. This is a player who has long been regarded as one of the most exciting prospects in Arsenal’s youth ranks – he made his debut for the under-18s at the age of 14 – and his talent has been obvious to anyone who has watched him play.
“I am doing my coaching licence and I have trained the Under-16s,” said Granit Xhaka, the former Arsenal midfielder, in 2022. “You can see a big difference with him and the other guys. He is very, very special.”
It was an indication of Nwaneri’s standing among the first-team players that, during their thrashing of West Ham United last season, the Arsenal substitutes were urging Arteta to give him a chance. “The players on the bench were whispering to bring Ethan on,” the Arsenal manager said, after handing 13 minutes to the teenager.
If that afternoon marked another step forward for Nwaneri, then this summer’s pre-season tour of the United States represented the biggest leap yet. Nwaneri shone in the US, against serious opposition. In a match against Bournemouth, he cruised past opponents with power and poise. Against Manchester United, he created a goal with a brilliant cross.
Such was Nwaneri’s impact, he effectively altered Arsenal’s transfer plans. Fabio Vieira, the £30 million signing from Porto, has been Odegaard’s understudy for the past two seasons. This summer, he was loaned back to Portugal. It was clear that Nwaneri had moved ahead of him in the pecking order.
“Something unique that he has got, that I really liked from the beginning, is his ability to take the ball in tight areas, to escape, a little bit like Jack Wilshere used to do,” said Arteta of Nwaneri last season. “The personality he has: he trains with us like he trains with the under-18s and under-16s. I love that in a player.”
Nwaneri comes from a family of Arsenal fans and grew up in Islington, near the Emirates Stadium. As a kid he spent time at Spurs, Chelsea and West Ham United, but committed to Arsenal when he was nine. Much like Bukayo Saka, he has since progressed through the academy pathway, regularly playing above his age group. He was only 12 when Arteta was first alerted to his potential.
Nwaneri is especially popular at the club because, sources say, he has always been the grounded type. He is by no means the loudest in the dressing room, and he has never acted up despite the hype and his obvious superiority to the vast majority of other academy boys. If anything, Telegraph Sport understands, he is among the more shy and reserved players.
As with Saka, Nwaneri is academically diligent: teachers at St John’s School in Enfield have recalled how he quietly handed in his homework the day after making his Arsenal debut at Brentford (when he was so young that he was not even allowed to get changed alongside his adult team-mates). The Nwaneri family have never allowed him to fall behind on his studies.
There are no guarantees in academy football but Nwaneri, along with the similarly talented Myles Lewis-Skelly, was probably as close as it gets to a guarantee of a professional contract. The danger for Arsenal, though, was that it would not be with them. In the spring of 2023, they were at serious risk of losing him to a Premier League rival, with some in the club believing he was more likely to leave than stay.
Those fears, thankfully for Arsenal, were ultimately eased. Nwaneri is understood to have rejected more lucrative offers from elsewhere in order to remain at the club, and in March last year – at the age of 17 – he signed his first professional deal.
From that moment on, the goal has been obvious: become a first-team regular. In terms of technical skill, it is clear he has the quality to do so. The areas of his game that have required the most work are his positional understanding and his off-the-ball work. To play in midfield for Arsenal requires a huge amount of discipline and running power without the ball, and such aspects of the game do not come easily to a teenager.
Nwaneri evidently has all the ingredients required, though, to be a star for his club. Inside the organisation, that much has been obvious for years. On Wednesday night, the wider world could see it, too. He looks ready to follow in the footsteps of both Saka, as the poster boy of the academy, and also Odegaard, as the child prodigy with ambitions of reaching the very top of the game.
Source Agencies
