Comparing Ethan Nwaneri’s 2024-25 record with Lamine Yamal’s breakthrough season

Nestor Watach • 19 Feb 2025

Arsenal wonderkid Ethan Nwaneri is enjoying a remarkable breakthrough season for Mikel Arteta’s Gunners – but how do his stats stack up against another generational talent, Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal?

Both players were born in 2007 and have enjoyed prodigious rises. Nwaneri is about four months older than Yamal, while they made their debuts aged just 15 back in the 2022-23 season.

Nwaneri become the youngest debutant in Premier League history as a substitute aged 15 years and 181 days at Brentford in September 2022. A few months later, Yamal became the youngest player to represent Barcelona in La Liga at 15 years, 9 months, and 16 days old.

While Nwaneri had to bide his time in the Hale End youth ranks – no further senior appearances that season, only one further brief cameo in 2023-24 – Yamal became an important player under Xavi Hernandez as a 16-year-old last season.

Yamal played 50 games in all competitions for Xavi’s Barca last season, notching seven goals and seven assists. He showed enough potential to earn Spain call-ups and subsequently nailed down his spot in the starting XI, become the youngest player in European Championship history last summer.

And the La Masia graduate shone in Germany, one of the players of the tournament with a starring role in La Roja’s trophy triumph. He scored or assisted in all four knockout games, including an unforgettable long-range strike against France in the semi-finals before setting up Nico Williams against England in the final.

It will be a hell of a feat if Nwaneri can replicate anything like that in his international career, but you’d imagine that Thomas Tuchel will be strongly considering giving the teenager his first call-up following his eye-catching performances for Arsenal in recent months.

A year after Yamal, Nwaneri is enjoying a breakthrough season of his own. Arteta originally used him sparingly as a fringe player, but he’s now getting regular starts amid their injury crisis and thriving with the opportunities.

“You don’t feel sorry for yourself, you take ownership, you start taking more risks, everybody,” Arteta told reporters in his post-match press conference, following Nwaneri’s man-of-the-match performance in the 2-0 victory away to Leicester City.

“Nwaneri, 17-years-old – he takes the ball, the first one is an action like this, he runs past two, three players and wants to take a shot. I just love it, you want to play here, you want to be at that level you need to play with that courage.”

Even with limited starts and the entire run-in to come, Nwaneri has notched as many goals for Arsenal this season as Yamal managed in his breakthrough 2023-24 campaign for Barcelona.

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Here’s how they stack up against one another: