#oderice

don’t go wasting your emotions

‘Joining the arsenal had been, initially, the perfect idea. It fit into the plans and ideas he had for his career so perfectly. His friendship with Bukayo had only solidified his expectations.

YOU GET ME. obligatory disclaimer that i’m putting on my tinhat from here on out.

declan laying claim to max as his Government Assigned Child Prodigy (GACP) is a perfect way to put it, but to fully understand the significance of what he’s doing here we actually have to talk about ethan and myles and to some extent their contrasting personalities. it’s really funny to me that ethan was positioned as martin’s GACP (see the video where the club sat them down and had them talk about/advise and be advised on being a 15-16yo child prodigy) but that pairing hasn’t taken off the way max/declan has. not because they aren’t close — ethan clearly looks up to and respects martin, and is evidently trying to model some aspects of his game after him — but because they’re both just more introverted and a lot of this modelling is presumably taking place offline/off-camera/more subtly.

meanwhile declan clearly attempted to ‘lay claim’ to myles in the same way he’s doing to max now — but it didn’t work because myles has blossomed faster and more confidently than anyone, even the team, expected. you can’t really be a mentor figure to someone who’s become a full-fledged character in his own right (think myles’ haaland celebration, big game performances etc). you can be a big-brother figure as declan has settled into—the way myles and declan tussle and jokingly put each other in headlocks is very reminiscent of sibling banter—but that leaves declan without a GACP, without a social-media-friendly, social-capital-boosting way to establish his authority.

enter max dowman! especially interesting to consider declan and max’s relationship in the context of max’s ascendancy in the u-17 england nt and declan being heavily earmarked for the upcoming england captaincy. it’s important also to note that like ethan, max on paper has more similarities to martin (position, child prodigy etc) but declan and him are bound by their shared british boy vibes (see: their social media, where declan regularly comments on max’s posts etc etc.) the recent selfie of them after max’s debut against milan is like the nail in the coffin for me that they’re super aware of it. not to say that it’s not genuine, because it definitely is, but i think they’re both actively playing into it bc it’s mutually beneficial—it’s something to be Declan Rice’s Government Assigned Child Prodigy, and it’s something to be Max Dowman’s Government Assigned Mentor. in fact in max’s post about the spain offseason the last 2/4 pictures are of him in very similar poses with declan and martin respectively, which suggests to me that beyond simply vibing with declan more because of personality there’s also a layer of practicality there: better to be rice’s GACP than odegaard’s in terms of social capital!

this ties in to the bigger picture of how i interpret martin/declan’s characters as well: to me oderice have an extremely complicated relationship wherein everything is about power, authority (formalised or otherwise), and how they can exercise it over others or each other. the hale end kids are imo just another front through which they fight this psychosexual proxy war. if declan’s competency and authority can’t be rewarded with captaincy (of arsenal or england) just yet, mentorship of the ridiculously gifted next generation is a low-hanging and obvious way to prove that authority!