After 31 years, after countless near-misses and close calls, the record that Super Eagles legend Nwankwo Kanu set as a teenage boy in Vienna still stands — and it will stand for at least another year. PETER AKINBO writes
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.
Instead, Kanu reigns on.
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.
Kanu contributed 12 goals in all competitions during the side’s historic 1994/95 season, as Ajax became the first, and so far only, side to win both their domestic league and the Champions League without losing a single game.
His fingerprints were on the run throughout. In the quarter-finals against Hajduk Split, it was Kanu who broke the deadlock, burying the ball into the net at the 39th minute to give Ajax the lead in what became a 3-0 victory. In the semi-final second leg against Bayern Munich, he came off the bench in the 67th minute as Ajax ran riot in a 5-2 win to reach the final.
In Vienna, against the reigning champions AC Milan, it was Kanu who replaced Seedorf in the 53rd minute as Ajax went in search of the crucial first goal. He probed, he threatened, he nearly scored himself — but it was fellow substitute Patrick Kluivert who delivered the decisive blow, finishing in the 85th minute to win the trophy.
Three members of that Ajax side occupy the top three spots on the all-time list of youngest Champions League winners, with Kluivert ranking second at 18 years and 327 days.
Dowman, for his part, is no ordinary challenger. The Arsenal teenager became the youngest player ever to appear in the Champions League at just 15 years and 308 days, and broke the record as the Premier League’s youngest ever scorer with a remarkable goal against Everton. He will have other chances. But on Saturday night in Budapest, as Gabriel’s penalty sailed over the bar and PSG’s players erupted in celebration, the challenge fell short once again.
Thirty-one years on from Vienna, King Kanu still reigns.
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