Arsenal strengthened its grip on the Premier League title race on the day its 16-year-old wonderkid, Max Dowman, scored a brilliant solo goal to become the competition’s youngest ever scorer.
After Arsenal relied on late goals by Viktor Gyokeres and Dowman to snatch a 2-0 home win over Everton, second-place Manchester City could only draw 1-1 at West Ham a few hours later Saturday.
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Newcastle United's Anthony Gordon scores their side's first goal of the game during the Premier League match between Chelsea and Newcastle, in London, Saturday March 14, 2026. (John Walton/PA via AP)
West Ham's Konstantinos Mavropanos celebrates scoring his side's first goal during the English Premier League soccer match between West Ham United and Manchester City in London, England, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Shopland)
Manchester City's Erling Haaland grimaces in pain during the English Premier League soccer match between West Ham United and Manchester City in London, England, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Shopland)
Arsenal's Max Dowman celebrates after scoring during the English Premier League soccer match between Arsenal and Everton in London, England, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Everton's Dwight McNeil shoots during the English Premier League soccer match between Arsenal and Everton in London, England, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Arsenal's Viktor Gyoekeres, left, and Max Dowman celevrate after a goal during the English Premier League soccer match between Arsenal and Everton in London, England, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Sunderland's Omar Alderete, left, and Brighton and Hove Albion's Danny Welbeck battle for the ball during the Premier League match in Sunderland, England, Saturday March 14, 2026. (Owen Humphreys/PA via AP)
Sunderland's Lutsharel Geertruida, left, and Brighton and Hove Albion's Yankuba Minteh fight for the ball during the Premier League match in Sunderland, England, Saturday March 14, 2026. (Owen Humphreys/PA via AP)
The lead grew to nine points on what might prove to be a defining day in Arsenal's bid for a first English league title since 2004.
It will certainly never be forgotten by Dowman, the school kid and surely a future superstar in English soccer.
At 16 years, 73 days, he changed the game after coming on in the second half for his third Premier League appearance in a breakthrough season that has already seen him become the youngest player in Champions League history.
It was his cross from the right that was missed by Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford and struck the midriff of Arsenal substitute Piero Hincapie. The ball bounced across the goalmouth and Gyokeres applied the finishing touch from close range.
Then, in the seventh minute of stoppage time, Dowman collected the ball midway in his own half after a corner was cleared, dribbled around two players, and raced clear to tap into an empty net. Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford was stranded upfield having gone up for the corner in search of an equalizer.
City couldn't match Arsenal, surrendering the lead given to Pep Guardiola's team by Bernardo Silva in the 31st minute. Four minutes later, Konstantinos Mavropanos headed home the equalizer at a corner.
It wraps up a tough week for City, which was beaten 3-0 by Real Madrid in the first leg of the Champions League's round of 16 on Wednesday.
Across London, Chelsea lost 1-0 to Newcastle thanks to an 18th-minute goal by Anthony Gordon.
Chelsea stayed in fifth place but could be overtaken by Liverpool, which hosts struggling Tottenham on Sunday.
Burnley is running out of time and hope in the Premier League.
A 0-0 home draw with Bournemouth on Saturday left next-to-last Burnley — one of the many U.S.-owned teams in England’s top division — eight points from safety with just eight games remaining this season and facing an immediate return to the Championship.
Burnley has won just four of its 30 league games.
Sunderland, another promoted team, appears to be safe from relegation but is limping toward the end of the season after a third straight home loss – this time to Brighton 1-0.
The only goal was a bizarre one, with Yankuba Minteh’s mis-hit cross from the byline somehow squeezing in at the near post in the 58th minute at the Stadium of Light.
Sunderland hadn’t lost at home until a defeat to Liverpool on Feb. 11. Since then, it has lost to Fulham and now Brighton.
Steve Douglas is at https://twitter.com/sdouglas80
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Newcastle United's Anthony Gordon scores their side's first goal of the game during the Premier League match between Chelsea and Newcastle, in London, Saturday March 14, 2026. (John Walton/PA via AP)
West Ham's Konstantinos Mavropanos celebrates scoring his side's first goal during the English Premier League soccer match between West Ham United and Manchester City in London, England, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Shopland)
Manchester City's Erling Haaland grimaces in pain during the English Premier League soccer match between West Ham United and Manchester City in London, England, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Shopland)
Arsenal's Max Dowman celebrates after scoring during the English Premier League soccer match between Arsenal and Everton in London, England, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Everton's Dwight McNeil shoots during the English Premier League soccer match between Arsenal and Everton in London, England, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Arsenal's Viktor Gyoekeres, left, and Max Dowman celevrate after a goal during the English Premier League soccer match between Arsenal and Everton in London, England, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Sunderland's Omar Alderete, left, and Brighton and Hove Albion's Danny Welbeck battle for the ball during the Premier League match in Sunderland, England, Saturday March 14, 2026. (Owen Humphreys/PA via AP)
Sunderland's Lutsharel Geertruida, left, and Brighton and Hove Albion's Yankuba Minteh fight for the ball during the Premier League match in Sunderland, England, Saturday March 14, 2026. (Owen Humphreys/PA via AP)
HOUSTON (AP) — Artemis II’s astronauts returned from the moon with a dramatic splashdown in the Pacific on Friday to close out humanity’s first lunar voyage in more than a half-century.
It was a triumphant homecoming for the crew of four whose record-breaking lunar flyby revealed not only swaths of the moon’s far side — never seen before by human eyes — but a total solar eclipse.
Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen hit the atmosphere traveling Mach 33 — or 33 times the speed of sound — a blistering blur not seen since NASA’s Apollo moonshots of the 1960s and 1970s. Their Orion capsule, dubbed Integrity, made the plunge on automatic pilot.
The tension in Mission Control mounted as the capsule became engulfed in red-hot plasma during peak heating and entered a planned communication blackout.
All eyes were on the capsule’s life-protecting heat shield that had to withstand thousands of degrees during reentry. On the spacecraft’s only other test flight — in 2022, with no one on board — the shield’s charred exterior came back looking as pockmarked as the moon.
Like so many others, lead flight director Jeff Radigan anticipated feeling some of that “irrational fear that is human nature,” especially during the six-minute blackout that preceded the opening of the parachutes. The recovery ship USS John P. Murtha awaited the crew’s arrival off the San Diego coast, along with a squadron of military planes and helicopters.
The astronauts’ families huddled in Mission Control’s viewing room, where cheers erupted when the capsule emerged from its communication blackout and again at splashdown.
The last time NASA and the Defense Department teamed up for a lunar crew's reentry was Apollo 17 in 1972. Artemis II was projected to come screaming back at 36,170 feet (11,025 meters) per second — or 24,661 mph (39,668 kph) — just shy of the record before slowing to a 19 mph (30 kph) splashdown.
“A perfect bull’s-eye splashdown,” reported Mission Control’s Rob Navias.
Launched from Florida on April 1, the astronauts racked up one win after another as they deftly navigated NASA’s long-awaited lunar comeback, the first major step in establishing a sustainable moon base.
Artemis II didn't land on the moon or even orbit it. But it broke Apollo 13's distance record and marked the farthest that humans have ever journeyed from Earth when the crew reached 252,756 miles (406,771 kilometers). Then in the mission's most heart-tugging scene, the teary astronauts asked permission to name a pair of craters after their moonship and Wiseman's late wife, Carroll.
During Monday's record-breaking flyby, they documented scenes of the moon's far side never seen before by the human eye along with a total solar eclipse. The eclipse, in particular, “just blew all of us away,” Glover said.
Their sense of wonder and love awed everyone, as did their breathtaking pictures of the moon and Earth. The Artemis II crew channeled Apollo 8's first lunar explorers with Earthset, showing our Blue Marble setting behind the gray moon. It was reminiscent of Apollo 8’s famous Earthrise shot from 1968.
“It just makes you want to continue to go back,” Radigan said on the eve of splashdown. “It's the first of many trips and we just need to continue on because there’s so much” more to learn about the moon.
Their moonshot drew global attention as well as star power, earning props from President Donald Trump; Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney; Britain's King Charles III; Ryan Gosling, star of the latest space flick “Project Hail Mary”; Scarlett Johansson of the Marvel Cinematic Universe; and even Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner of TV’s original “Star Trek.”
Despite its rich scientific yield, the nearly 10-day flight was not without technical issues. Both the capsule’s drinking water and propellant systems were hit with valve problems. In perhaps the most high-profile predicament, the toilet kept malfunctioning, but the astronauts shrugged it all off.
“We can’t explore deeper unless we are doing a few things that are inconvenient,” Koch said, “unless we’re making a few sacrifices, unless we’re taking a few risks, and those things are all worth it.”
Added Hansen: “You do a lot of testing on the ground, but your final test is when you get this hardware to space and it’s a doozy.”
Under the revamped Artemis program, next year’s Artemis III will see astronauts practice docking their capsule with a lunar lander or two in orbit around Earth. Artemis IV will attempt to land a crew of two near the moon’s south pole in 2028.
The Artemis II astronauts' allegiance was to those future crews, Wiseman said.
“But we really hoped in our soul is that we could for just for a moment have the world pause and remember that this is a beautiful planet and a very special place in our universe, and we should all cherish what we have been gifted,” he said.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
In this photo provided by NASA, the Orion spacecraft with Artemis II crewmembers aboard approaches the surface of the Pacific Ocean for splashdown off the coast of California, Friday, April 10, 2026. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP)
In this photo provided by NASA, the Orion spacecraft with Artemis II crewmembers aboard approaches the surface of the Pacific Ocean for splashdown off the coast of California, Friday, April 10, 2026. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP)
In this image from video provided by NASA, the Artemis II Orion capsule splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, on Friday, April 10, 2026. (NASA via AP)
In this photo provided by NASA, U.S. Navy divers prepare to deploy in small boats from the well deck of USS John P. Murtha to recover Artemis II crew members NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, commander; Victor Glover, pilot; Christina Koch, mission specialist; and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist and NASA's Orion spacecraft in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, Friday, April 10, 2026. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP)
In this image from video provided by NASA, the Artemis II Orion capsule, right, separates from the service module above the Earth in preparation for splash down in the Pacific Ocean. (NASA via AP)
In this image provided by NASA, the Artemis II crew, counterclockwise from top left, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, Commander Reid Wiseman, and Pilot Victor Glover pose with eclipse viewers during a lunar flyby, Monday, April 6, 2026. (NASA via AP)
In this image provided by NASA, the Artemis II crew photographed the Moons curved limb during their journey around the far side of the Moon on April 6, 2026. (NASA via AP)
In this image provided by NASA, the Artemis II crew photographed a bright portion of the Moon on April 6, 2026. (NASA via AP)
In this image provided by NASA, the Artemis II crew captured this view as the Earth sets behind the Moon during a lunar flyby, Monday, April 6, 2026. (NASA via AP)
