Teenage prodigies in football have been thing for as long as football has been around, but in the modern game there appears to be more and more of them popping up and dominating headlines, drawing comparisons to greats of the game for their obvious potential.
The best example of that is Kylian Mbappe who after one outstanding season at AS Monaco was sold to PSG for £166m, a fee that would have been totally incomprehensible a decade ago.
We've also seen Marcus Rashford emerge as one of the brightest talents in the game, and 17-year-old Ben Woodburn almost single-handedly dragged Wales back in to World Cup qualifying contention with match-winning cameos during the week.
Woodburn was the centre of discussion on BT Sport after Man Utd drew 2-2 with Stoke as a Liverpool fan - clearly not wanting to discuss today's result - requested the opinion of Michael Owen on just how far the talented you attacker can go.
This prompted a comparison graphic of Woodburn and Owen's stats, which prompted Rio Ferdinand to outline why he can't stand comparing the likes of Woodburn, Rashford, and even Mbappe to Michael Owen for what the English striker achieved in his teenage years.
You can't compare these young boys nowadays to what Michael Owen was doing. We said it before the game, when he was the same age as Rashford,
he'd won two golden boots in the Premier League, scored 50 goals, Rashford has got 20.They are great young players, these boys, but people seem to forget, and it's half disrespectful in my eyes, when you start comparing - even look at the likes of Mbappe, if he's going for that type of money now what would [Owen] be going for?
It's a joke.
I get frustrated because people forget, they forget too quickly what certain players are doing because when he came on, same with Wayne Rooney, you don't get those players very often.
Ferdinand finished by stating that fans should let youngsters like Woodburn and Rashford, players he is very fond of, breathe. It's not just disrespecting his good friend that has Rio agitated, it's the pressure put on young players by the comparisons also.
He has a point regarding people forgetting just how good Michael Owen was, as it seems people only seem to remember post-Real Madrid and punditry Owen, which is why he is mocked relentlessly on social media.
Owen's achievements as a teenager are absolutely incredible, so Rio is right to be questioning why players with inferior numbers are being compared to him, but on the other hand, the idea that Mbappe and Rashford in particular could go on and enjoy more successful careers than Michael Owen is not exactly a crazy one.
