Freddy Adu gives Arsenal youngster Max Dowman some important advice on dealing with pressure

Freddy Adu has issued some advice to Max Dowman after the highly-rated Arsenal teenager became the youngest goalscorer in Premier League history at the age of 16 years and 73 days.

For those unfamiliar with his journey, Adu was widely regarded as one of the most promising footballers in the world when he rose through the youth ranks in the United States.

He joined the US Olympic Development Program and featured in an under-14 tournament, where he caught the eye after coming up against some of Europe's top clubs, including Juventus.

In fact, those behind the scenes at Major League Soccer offered Adu the biggest contract in its history ($500,000 per year) during the 2004 SuperDraft, when he was aged just 14.

DC United selected the teenager as their first overall pick, and he would soon become the youngest player to appear in an MLS fixture, just two months before his 15th birthday.

It was a lot of pressure to deal with. When he was just 14, Phil Knight, the chairman of Nike, said Freddy had the ability to accomplish more than Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and LeBron James.

Unsurprisingly, Adu struggled to deal with the overwhelming amount of pressure on his shoulders. He signed for Benfica in 2007, but never hit the heights of what was expected of him.

Freddy Adu was touted for greatness at 14. Image credit: Getty

More than two decades after Adu's record-breaking appearance for DC United, another wonderkid, Max Dowman, made history by becoming the youngest goalscorer in Premier League history.

Many have tipped Dowman to go on and achieve great things in the game. Some have even suggested he should be involved with England at this summer's World Cup.

Speaking to SPORTbible via a betting apps site, Adu was full of praise for the talented Dowman but warned about the impact of outside noise after he got "caught up in it" during the early stages of his career.

What are your thoughts on Max Dowman? A very young man, described as a wonderkid, a prodigy, a guy who cuts in from the right onto his left, and may carry the hopes of a nation one day...

"Listening to all that, it seems like words I've heard before! Max is very talented. I'll be completely honest with you, I didn't know much about him until recently, but just watching him in the games, I watched some clips of him and whatnot, and he is very talented, and I think he can go really far.

"He's got to be handled right, though. It's one where we can't put too much pressure on him at such a young age. It's tough. A lot of people don't understand this but, yes, as much as it's cool to be known and have your name out there, it's just very tough for a young player when there are such huge expectations placed on him at such a young age, and so early on.

"Let him develop, let him play, let him grow, and let him be his own player. Let's not rush him and try to make him the next this, the next that. Just let him be his own player and let him develop as a player."

Could you see him being brought off the bench in the World Cup for England? Would you put him in England's World Cup squad?

"Oof, that's tough. That's tough, because it's the World Cup, right? I do remember Theo Walcott.

"It’s tough, just giving him the experience to let him watch, maybe for the future as part of the national team, as a big national team player, okay. Bring him in and let him watch, but it’s the World Cup, you can’t really afford to bring players that you don’t plan to use.

"It's just, a lot of people work so hard to get a chance to play in that World Cup, so I get it. I had been in that situation before, where I had a talk with Bruce Arena at the time, and he told me that he wasn't gonna bring me, just because, yes, I was a good player, but he needed every single body out there that he could use, right? And at that point, we weren't exactly going in as a big-time, national team favourite or something like that.

"We had to claw, we had to work to get every point, every goal, everything we could so we could get in the World Cup squad, but he had to really bring players that were ready to go right away.

"So, I get it, I've seen it from the Max’s side, but I've seen it from the coach's point of view as well."

Max Dowman finds the back of the net against Everton. Image credit: Getty

There have been comparisons made to Rooney and Messi already. How does he deal with that pressure? You've been through it - what is that pressure like?

"It's a lot of pressure! I mean, if you let it affect you, it's gonna affect you, but you can't get caught up in it as a player, although it is easy to get caught up in it, it really is. But you’ve just gotta stay focused on what you've been doing and try and block out the noise.

"I know it's almost impossible to block out the noise, because everywhere you go, you're gonna see it, you're gonna hear it, people will be talking about it - hell, even your own friends in your own little friend group will be talking about it, right.

"So, it's tough to block it out, but you have to be really mentally strong to just focus on your game."

Lastly, what's your advice to Max in terms of how to keep focused?

"Well, you just gotta go in every day and take it one day at a time, and not worry about what's gonna happen a month, two months, six months, a year from now. You just gotta take it one day at a time.

"It's hard, but you have to, because whatever you did to get you to that point, you gotta keep doing that, and you can never get away from that.

"I got to a point where I got away from that, and my form dipped. It dipped, and it was just hard to get back to that kind of form when you let the outside noise creep in.

"You just gotta look straight ahead, and you just gotta keep going, because the same people that are giving you all this praise, giving you all this attention and adoration, these are gonna be the same people that are gonna cut you right back down if you're not playing well.

"You just can't get too high, or too low."