Ethan Nwaneri, the Arsenal teenager who became the Premier League's youngest ever player
In September 2022, with Arsenal short of fit players, Mikel Arteta followed a gut feeling and sent on a schoolboy in stoppage time at Brentford. Ethan Nwaneri was 15 years and 181 days old, three days younger than the English top-flight record that had stood since 1964.
Nwaneri arrived on 21 March 2007, delivered at Islington's Whittington Hospital to a Nigerian father of Igbo heritage and a mother with English and French roots. He joined Arsenal's academy at eight, was playing for the under-18s by 14 and came through alongside his friend Myles Lewis-Skelly. Injuries, including one to captain Martin Ødegaard, forced Arteta to fill the bench with youngsters for the Brentford game, and replacing Fábio Vieira made Nwaneri both the Premier League's youngest player, ahead of Harvey Elliott, and Arsenal's youngest in any competition, beating Cesc Fàbregas's mark of 16 years and 177 days.
Because he was still a schoolboy, he signed scholarship terms in June 2023, with a professional deal promised for his seventeenth birthday. His first senior goals came in September 2024, a brace in a 5–1 League Cup win over Bolton, and his first league goal followed in November against Nottingham Forest, making him the ninth-youngest scorer in Premier League history at 17 years and 247 days.
In January 2025 he joined Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney as the only players to reach five goals in a season before turning 18. That month he also scored his first Champions League goal, at Girona, and then curled in a late fifth against Manchester City in a 5–1 win. He was shortlisted among six nominees for PFA Young Player of the Year and signed a long-term contract in August 2025.
Loans followed: to Marseille in January 2026, where he scored 13 minutes into his debut against Lens, and to Borussia Dortmund that September as cover for an injured Giannis Konstantelias. Eligible for Nigeria and France, he chose England, scoring in the opening games of two under-17 European Championships and at the Under-17 World Cup. He debuted for the under-21s on his 18th birthday and played all six matches as England retained the European Under-21 title in 2025.
Source: Ethan Nwaneri
