Former Nigerian attacker Nwankwo Kanu remains the youngest player in history to win the UEFA Champions League after Arsenal’s bid to produce the player who would finally dethrone him ended in the most painful of fashions on Saturday night in Budapest.
Paris Saint-Germain beat the Gunners 4-3 on penalties following a 1-1 draw at the Puskás Aréna, with Gabriel Magalhães missing Arsenal’s fifth and final penalty to keep the cup in Parisian hands. The dream of a first European crown in Arsenal’s 140-year history was gone. And with it went the chance to consign Kanu’s landmark to history.
Max Dowman, 16 years old, had been named among Arsenal’s substitutes for the final, and the prospect of the teenager eclipsing Kanu had been one of the most compelling subplots of the occasion. Dowman was on the bench in Budapest, and had Arsenal won, and the youngster stepped onto that pitch, the record books would have been rewritten.
The Nigerian won his medal on May 24, 1995, in Vienna, lifting the trophy with Ajax at 18 years and 296 days old. He had arrived at the club two years earlier as a gifted teenager from Iwuanyanwu Nationale, having caught the continent’s attention with a spectacular showing at the 1993 U-17 World Cup in Japan, where he netted five times in three group fixtures as Nigeria lifted the trophy.
Ajax moved swiftly, and Kanu found himself embedded in one of the greatest young squads European football has ever assembled — Louis van Gaal’s side of Clarence Seedorf, Edgar Davids, Marc Overmars, Patrick Kluivert and Finidi George, a team that would define the game for a generation.
