Dowman, who is only 15, began training with the first team a year ago and has already made three appearances.<\/p>\n
The midfielder could make history on Wednesday night if he plays against Olympiacos in the Champions League as he would become the youngest player in the competition\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
Rice has played a key role helping young players at Arsenal, including Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly when they made their breakthroughs last season.<\/p>\n
And the England star has been blown away by how well Dowman has risen to the challenge of being around the first team.<\/p>\n
\u201cEthan and Myles \u2013 the difference from last year to this year, how they\u2019ve grown as people, is incredible,\u201d Rice told TNT Sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll speak to anyone now, they\u2019re loud, they\u2019re themselves and that\u2019s what you want. You want people to feel comfortable.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, Max is only 15, just going to be turning 16 in December. I\u2019ve never seen a 15-year-old so comfortable around the first team, it\u2019s insane. They actually are just kids.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said to Max on the way back from pre-season tour, I couldn\u2019t get my head around it that he was going back to school.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe FaceTimed the other day and he had his school uniform on, and I was like: \u2018Mate, you\u2019ve just played in the Premier League a week ago, and now you\u2019re walking back through the school gates\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven me as a 15-year-old, going into West Ham\u2019s first-team dressing room, I would no way have been as confident as he was.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would\u2019ve been quiet in the corner. Unless someone spoke to me, I wouldn\u2019t have spoken to them, whereas I feel like now, Max especially, he\u2019s just so confident in himself and his ability.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe support network here is incredible and I\u2019ve seen the academy \u2013 the way they work, it\u2019s insane.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dowman, who is only 15, began training with the first team a year ago and has already made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[15133,61,60,112],"class_list":["post-55036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-arsenal","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}