Jason Dozzell has had a beady eye on Max Dowman ever since August, when Arsenal’s latest teenage sensation made his Premier League debut still four months short of his 16th birthday.
‘I saw him and thought, “That’s it, the record’s gone”,’ Dozzell says. ‘The oldest of my three boys, he’s an Arsenal fan, and he’s been doing my nut in, winding me up with messages, “Dowman’s on the bench”, “Dowman’s coming on”, “Dowman’s playing”. It’s ruined my weekends to be honest.’
Dozzell is joking. At least half-joking. He is smiling anyway, and still proud to be the youngest player to score in the top tier of English football. His record has been intact for 42 years and counting.
‘My saving grace was his injury in December,’ he tells Daily Mail Sport as we meet in Ipswich, three days after Dowman scored his first for Arsenal, a brilliant solo goal, the second in a 2-0 win against Everton.
At 16 years and 73 days, the Essex schoolboy became the youngest to score in the Premier League, just 16 days older than Dozzell was when he came on to score his first Ipswich goal, in February 1984.
‘I’ve still got the record, but this boy is going to be special,’ purrs 58-year-old Dozzell. ‘He can go on to be a player for England on the world stage for many years to come.
Jason Dozzell this week in Ipswich – 42 years after he became the youngest goalscorer in the English top flight
‘I made my mark and I’ve a place in the history books,’ says Dozzell, who played more than 400 games for Ipswich. ‘I’ll take that all day long’
‘Everything about him is just right. His balance, his mentality. The composure, the strength, the pace, the feet. It wasn’t just the goal. He changed the game. You can’t deny him right now. How can you hold him back? I think he starts the next one.’
The next one is the Carabao Cup final against Manchester City on Sunday.
‘Let him ride the wave,’ smiles Dozzell. ‘There’s no fear at that age. You’re not thinking of anything other than football. Let him ride it. See where it takes him and understand he will come down off that wave, when he does, when you see a bit of tiredness creep in or whatever, then go from there.
‘You can’t hold him back when he’s in that zone. It’s like a superstar was born on Saturday.’
Dozzell’s record-breaking goal, the third in a 3-1 win against Coventry at Portman Road, is seared into his mind. ‘Terry Butcher, free-kick on the halfway line,’ he recalls. ‘Big diagonal to John Wark, he’s headed it down and there’s a race, me and a defender and I stretched out a leg, got there first and whipped it over the keeper, right foot.’
Dozzell had grown up in the shadow of Portman Road. He was on the terraces at the age of six, and at Wembley at the age of 10 to see Ipswich lift the FA Cup. He saw Bobby Robson’s team evolve into UEFA Cup winners in 1981, and twice runners-up in the old Division One.
‘The ‘81 team was one of the best in the country,’ he says. ‘If you’d told me in three years I’d be playing with them, I’d have said you need locking up, but it happened. In my last year at school, I was delighted to be in the youth team. Two months later, I’m in the reserves. Two months later, the first team.’
The goal against Coventry changed his life instantly. He was smuggled home hidden in the back of Russell Osman’s jeep and when he reported next day for his Sunday League team he was greeted with such a melee of media attention he agreed not to play. There were cameras at his school on Monday where all the pupils and staff came out at break to watch him perform keepy-uppies in the yard.
‘Everything about Max Dowman is just right,’ says Dozzell. ‘His balance, his mentality. The composure, the strength, the pace, the feet’
‘I’d come out with a grand in cash in an envelope (each month). I just spent it, had a good time. I had a talent but was not psychologically prepared for everything that came with it’
Soon, Ipswich had taken him out of school to focus on training. He did not even return for his O-Level exams, an omission that resurfaced when football spat him out at the other end of his playing career. ‘It’s wrong isn’t it?’ he says. ‘Would never happen now.’
More immediately came the burden of expectation to produce more as some of the legendary players left and Ipswich were relegated. ‘You almost become a prisoner to that goal,’ says Dozzell. ‘For a few years it felt like I couldn’t top that but at the same time it was gone and you needed to accomplish more.’
There were also the distractions of instant fame and fortune, the classic pitfalls for football’s wonderkids. ‘We were on £25 a week in the youth team until I was 17 but they gave me the bonuses and they were £200 a game,’ says Dozzell. ‘So, if I played five times in a month, I’d come out with a grand in cash in an envelope.
‘I just spent it, had a good time. I had a talent but was not psychologically prepared for everything that came with it.’
Dozzell was raised by his mother and sister. His father, an American who worked at an airbase in Suffolk, had returned to the United States and they were not reconciled until he was into his 20s. Home life could be chaotic and football in those days was a fiercely macho culture. There was no shortage of camaraderie and plenty of drinking but very little in the way of emotional support.
‘It can become difficult without the right structure around you,’ says Dozzell, who was able to share his lessons of the rollercoaster when his son Andre, now at Portsmouth, burst into the Ipswich team a decade ago and scored on his debut at the age of 16, just like his dad.
‘I didn’t believe in fate but to see him do that was crazy. My experiences came in handy, but Andre had a very different pathway to me. His upbringing has been stable with a lot of love around him. He’s a very different animal to me.
‘You look at Max Dowman and just know he’s going to be fine. You know he’s got good people around him.’
Despite his own problems, Dozzell did go on to accomplish much more. There were nine England Under-21 caps and he captained Ipswich, for whom he went on to make more than 400 appearances. He scored 16 goals in the 1991-92 promotion campaign and helped them survive in the inaugural Premier League before a £1.9million move and four years at Tottenham.
Dozzell moved to Tottenham from Ipswich in 1993, spending four years with the club
Dozzell with Daily Mail Sport’s Matt Barlow this week. After a tough time with his mental health, Ipswich have found their former player a job in the Foundation
Dozzell’s son, Andre, who is now at Portsmouth, also came through the ranks at Ipswich. Like his dad, he also scored on his debut as a 16-year-old
Injuries hastened retirement in his early 30s, and the minefield of life after football triggered a slow descent into a mental health breakdown. He missed the companionship and the buzz. ‘The feeling of walking out of the tunnel and the crowd goes up…’ he says. ‘It’s a feeling I can’t explain. It’s just magical.’
Dozzell turned to drink and Class A drugs to cope with anxiety and panic attacks until a conviction for driving under the influence of cocaine in 2019 shocked him into action.
Friends and old team-mates rallied to help, and he learned to talk about his problems. One key part of therapy was to write his autobiography. Follow the Thunder is a brutally honest and compelling account.
Ipswich found him a job in the Foundation, the charitable arm of the club, and he threw himself into coaching and community duties. On Saturday, he will be in the corporate suites at Portman Road for a promotion clash with Millwall.
There are a few regrets for Dozzell. He wishes he had taken O-Levels. And the way he left Ipswich for Spurs still does not sit comfortably. But there are no regrets about that goal. Nor the slightest hint of what might have been had his career unfolded on a gentler trajectory. He wouldn’t trade that.
‘No, I’m not taking that goal away,’ he says. ‘I made my mark. I played more than 400 games for my club, played in the Premier League, played for Spurs and I’ve a place in the history books. I’ll take that all day long. I can live with the rest.’
