Owen to retire

As Carra stated,its a shame the way it ended on the bench at stoke,badly advised move to Real Madrid.

Let this be a lesson to all young players as to where greed for the big contract can get you.

Had it all here but wanted more. Moved on missed out on the champions league and career faltered.

Clown, I almost feel sorry for him but then recall his second bought of greed in going to Newcastle instead of back here. Muppet

Always remember him being injured and saying in a interview ill be fit for the next England game, we had 3 games before that always hated the greedy little sh*t after that, and he a f***in aweful pundit

A quote in one of today's papers by Owen.

'Looking back on my career,thinking what might have been,there is no doubt I would have won more honours had I signed for Manchester United as a youngster.I am pretty confident I would have been at the height of my powers over a longer period of time too.But would I change anything if I could rewind the clock ? Not a chance.The best years of my life were at Liverpool.

A quote in one of today's papers by Owen.

'Looking back on my career,thinking what might have been,there is no doubt I would have won more honours had I signed for Manchester United as a youngster.I am pretty confident I would have been at the height of my powers over a longer period of time too.But would I change anything if I could rewind the clock ? Not a chance.The best years of my life were at Liverpool.

I put him in my best 25 players  but ......


Non Legend.

Nobody.

Insignificant.

Irrelevant   etc etc etc.


and for good measure ......






Judas C**T.

(Sorry ladies)

Michael Owen's steady decline seems inevitable with hindsight

Posted by Gabriele Marcotti

You sort of feel that, one day, he'll be the answer to a trivia question. Who was the Premier League's top goal scorer twice before his 20th birthday and never achieved the feat again?

Or, who won the Ballon d'Or in 2001 but then never won anything the rest of his career, except for two league cups and a Premier League title in a season in which he contributed just 238 minutes?

Or who is the only England player to have scored in four major tournaments, despite making his last appearance for his country at age 28?

Michael Owen announced his retirement on Tuesday, prompting reflection on one of the more bizarre and -- with hindsight -- mismanaged tenures in the game.

The stock answer is that injuries stopped Owen from maintaining and building on what looked like an ascent into footballing lore. But that only tells part of the story of how someone who could break into the Liverpool first team at 17 and be his club's top goal scorer in each of his seven full seasons at Anfield could end up getting booed on his return to Merseyside. Or how he could end up with 131 top-flight goals in his first eight years as a professional and then notch just 32 in his next seven and a half seasons.

In Owen's case, you can't blame drinking or partying or even a lack of professionalism. By all accounts, except for a penchant for horse-racing and helicopters, he was the consummate pro, to the point where his image ranged from the bland to the nerdy.

Injuries did slow him down and the roots of that may have been in the way he was handled at youth level and in his first years at the club. He had a lot of miles on the clock at an early age and you wonder if his body received the physical attention it might have received today or, indeed, at another club.

Another issue, quite plainly, seems to be coaching-related. Owen was blessed with quickness and acceleration and his game never really progressed beyond that. A thought echoed by both coaches at Real Madrid and with England was that his movement as a striker was never quite as good as it should have been. All those runs off the ball, coming short, going wide, opening channels and drawing defenders -- it was never a feature of his game, possibly because it was never taught.

He also didn't seem to have the "eye for goal," that mysterious ability to predict where the ball was going to go or how play was going to unfold. It's a trait that, probably, can't be taught but that so many of the great goal scorers share, from Radamel Falcao to Robbie Fowler, from Pippo Inzaghi to Ruud Van Nistelrooy. If you get on the end of chances regularly, you multiply your opportunities to score. Even when he was scoring a lot, it felt that Owen worked harder than other to get his shot off, that he rarely simply "popped up" the way some of the aforementioned "natural goal scorers" did.

It blends in to another flaw: vision. Owen was never a great passer or provider, not because he was necessarily selfish (most goal scorers need to be, to some degree) but because it simply wasn't a part of his game. His touch was good, but not exceptional, he had an awareness of where the goal was, but not always where his teammates were or, crucially where they might be.

There were two areas where he did excel and, with hindsight, he was perhaps over-reliant on them. One was his absurd pace, which often papered over cracks in his game. For a guy with such quick feet, you would have thought he'd have developed enough trickery to dribble or beat opponents with a body feint or a swerve, the kinds of technical things you maintain with age. Instead, he beat players in the most basic way: knock the ball past them, chase after it and outrun them. While he had his youth and his speed, it worked a charm; once he lost it, he didn't have enough of a Plan B.

The other quality was his finishing. Which was, simply put, dead-eye stuff. He never seemed flustered, he never rushed a shot, he usually struck the ball cleanly. That, perhaps, is the one characteristic he possesses even today. The problem, though, is that great finishing isn't enough if you no longer can get into goal-scoring positions and receive the ball with a chance to shoot.

One theory doing the rounds is that, as a kid, Owen fell victim to coaches who valued results over development. It was far easier to tell him to play on the shoulder of the last defender and get someone to just lump the ball into space for him to run on to than to work with him so he could develop a well-rounded game. This allowed him to score lots of goals and it allowed his youth coaches to look extremely clever because they got results. It didn't do too much for him though when he got into the first team.

And, in fact, when he did break into Liverpool, his managers -- Roy Evans and then Gerard Houllier -- seem to ride his strengths rather than work on his weaknesses. They may have had a valid excuse -- they needed points straight away, they weren't there to teach him -- and in the short run it may have worked. But the deficiencies were clear, even at the England level. Indeed, when you consider that for several years he overlapped with Alan Shearer in his pomp and the pair never seemed to forge a reliable partnership it becomes pretty obvious that something was wrong.

At the same time, he made some decisions that -- again with the benefit of hindsight -- he might have handled differently. Despite coming through the ranks at Liverpool, he never fully developed a rapport with the fan base in the way the likes of Fowler, Steven Gerrard or Jamie Carragher did. He seemed detached, often preoccupied with something else. When he did speak out, he felt plastic and corporate.

He didn't help matters when he let his contract run down, basically forcing Liverpool to sell him to Real Madrid for a cut-price $11 million in the summer of 2004, because he only had a year left on his deal. At Real, he scored 13 goals, many of them in garbage-time, either after coming on as a sub or as a late score in a blowout.

At the end of the season, with Real ready to move him on, he made another huge blunder. He opted for Newcastle, the only club willing to honor his enormous contract. This was a side with a passionate fanbase, but also one which had finished 14th the year before and where overspending and mismanagement were already rife. The fact that he never seemed to embrace the northeast of England did not help. The stories of him commuting by helicopter may have been untrue, but what is true is that he often made a four hour round trip commute from his home in Cheshire. Injuries and a bad team -- Newcastle were relegated in 2008-09 -- did the rest.

That summer he put out a DVD highlight his skills as a way of marketing himself to prospective employers. It felt rather pathetic.

Manchester United gave three seasons on a pay-as-you-play deal and he moved through Old Trafford like a ghost, making just six league starts. Then came this year's epilogue, at Stoke, where he has played a grand total of 70 league minutes.

He's now trying to carve out some kind of media career and has started a blog, though, frankly, he comes across as distant and anodyne. A source close to him I spoke to blames the fact that he doesn't have a "natural fan base" at any club, despite having played for three of the most popular in England. He claims Liverpool fans resent him (also because some see him as being responsible for Fowler's demise), Newcastle fans felt cold-shouldered by him and to United supporters he was about as relevant as Gabriel Obertan. If only Owen had been marketed better, he says.

But maybe that was part of the problem off the pitch. Too often he felt like someone who was being "marketed" and "packaged" as a superstar. That, added to his injuries and his one-dimensional nature on the pitch -- and his lack of improvement from the time he was 18 -- ensure you're left wondering what might have been.

For my part, I chose to remember him at his finest. I recall a game in Toulouse, England versus Romania, at the 1998 World Cup. With England 1-0 down, 18-year-old Owen came on and, in the space of 18 minutes, hit the post and notched the equalizer. Romania still won, 2-1, thanks to a dazzling run by Dan Petrescu, but I can still hear the words of a now-departed veteran journalist sitting next to me in the press box.

This was a grizzled, grumpy old ink-stained wretch. A guy who tended to bark rather than speak. A man who had been to every World Cup since 1958.

"You know I don't like this game anymore, it's just a job and every year I feel like retiring," he said afterward, taking a drag from a cigarette. "But then I see something like this kid Owen and my heart warms again. Just like it did in 1958 when I saw Pele."

His heart was, no doubt, warmed a few days later, when Owen scored that brilliant goal against Argentina. Sadly, it wasn't long thereafter that his career began to dip and continued to do so until the present.

ESPNFC.com

Great piece on Michael Owen.

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/jim-white/michael-owen-goner-long-retirement-141858125.html

For Michael Owen it all happened so long ago.

So long ago, these last six or seven years of his career have been not much more than a lengthy prelude for his announcement yesterday.

The truth is, as an effective, potent, capable striking force he effectively slipped into retirement pretty soon after he came back from Real Madrid in 2005.

From his arrival at Newcastle that summer to yesterday he played but 107 club matches. Across eight seasons, that averages out at no more than 13 a year: it is hard to burn yourself on to the wider consciousness when you are just a bit-part player.

Lucky for Owen, then, that he had achieved enough before his hamstrings were frayed to establish his legacy. Because make no mistake about it, in those early days of his career he was something special.

It is not the rosy tint of hindsight that changes perception: he really was that good.

With that goal against Argentina in 1998, the hat trick against Germany and his cup-winning goals for Liverpool, all achieved before he was 21 he threatened to be the greatest English forward of all time.

The electric-heeled finisher with ice in his veins, for a time there seemed to be no doubt he would eventually snaffle every goal-scoring record around - 40 for England seemed to be but the beginning.

Pace has long been football’s most potent weapon.

But the thing about Owen as a young man was that he combined a sprinter’s speed with a ruthless football intelligence. Theo Walcott has pace, but rival defenders do not shiver with apprehension every time he receives the ball in the manner they did when Owen set off goalwards. For a start, when he went on a run, Owen seldom forgot to take the ball with him.

His problem was, when his hamstrings began to rebel, it removed from him his most potent asset. After the knee injury in the World Cup in 2006, the one which obliged the FA to pay out a record £10million of compensation to Newcastle, he never found anything which could compensate for the departure of his turn of pace.

Let go by Newcastle (and with very little mourning from the club’s followers) he spent three years acquainting himself with Manchester United’s treatment room.

Sure, he endeared himself to United fans with a last-second winning goal in the local derby, but his was a name that was no more than a footnote in the club history.

His few laboured appearances at Stoke latterly did not suggest he was wrong to throw in the towel.

From Paul Gascoigne through Andrew Flintoff to – whisper it – Fernando Torres, the history of sport is littered with those who seemingly made a Faustian pact, paying for moments of unimpeachable glory with injury-induced public decline.

But Owen is the one who hung on the longest in the fond hope that he could somehow defy the terms of the agreement and come back as good as new.
Or if not quite as good, then at least offering something different. His reserves of self-belief were never diminished.

Even as he kept large swathes of the medical profession in work, Owen never wavered from his absolute faith in his abilities. He was helped by his many admirers in the media who remembered what he had once been and thought he still had much to give the game.

Almost as familiar a story as an Owen injury was the clamour for his return to international duty provoked by his every comeback. A couple of goals in a League Cup first round tie and the headlines insisting he should be in England’s next line-up were immediately brought out. He was not a man short of lobbyists.

It was never to happen.

No matter how hard or how often his case was made, for the past five years there has not been a sight of him in an international shirt.

Though to his credit, Owen’s positivity never wavered. He kept smiling, kept trying, kept Tweeting his enthusiasm.

A guy always on the verge of a comeback, he kept insisting he could make a difference.

Now it is finally over, it would be better to remember him scorching through Argentina’s defence, or suddenly arriving in Arsenal’s penalty area, or wheeling away in absolute joy after planting a third in the back of the German net, of course.

But there was something admirable, too, something that should live in the memory, about the refusal to be cowed which characterised his later years in the game.
It is something we can all learn from as we fight the dying of the light.

Or take the Mancunian Dollar.



Rot.

Question is; who will be his dance partner on strictly next year? I'm going for Flavia.

Question is; who will be his dance partner on strictly next year? I'm going for Flavia.

I'll go for 'Michael Owen was meant to compete tonight but pulled his hamstring while stretching his hamstring'.

Question is; who will be his dance partner on strictly next year? I'm going for Flavia.

Bet his hamstring goes in the first week.

Michael Owen's steady decline seems inevitable with hindsight

Posted by Gabriele Marcotti

You sort of feel that, one day, he'll be the answer to a trivia question. Who was the Premier League's top goal scorer twice before his 20th birthday and never achieved the feat again?

Or, who won the Ballon d'Or in 2001 but then never won anything the rest of his career, except for two league cups and a Premier League title in a season in which he contributed just 238 minutes?

Or who is the only England player to have scored in four major tournaments, despite making his last appearance for his country at age 28?

Michael Owen announced his retirement on Tuesday, prompting reflection on one of the more bizarre and -- with hindsight -- mismanaged tenures in the game.

The stock answer is that injuries stopped Owen from maintaining and building on what looked like an ascent into footballing lore. But that only tells part of the story of how someone who could break into the Liverpool first team at 17 and be his club's top goal scorer in each of his seven full seasons at Anfield could end up getting booed on his return to Merseyside. Or how he could end up with 131 top-flight goals in his first eight years as a professional and then notch just 32 in his next seven and a half seasons.

In Owen's case, you can't blame drinking or partying or even a lack of professionalism. By all accounts, except for a penchant for horse-racing and helicopters, he was the consummate pro, to the point where his image ranged from the bland to the nerdy.

Injuries did slow him down and the roots of that may have been in the way he was handled at youth level and in his first years at the club. He had a lot of miles on the clock at an early age and you wonder if his body received the physical attention it might have received today or, indeed, at another club.

Another issue, quite plainly, seems to be coaching-related. Owen was blessed with quickness and acceleration and his game never really progressed beyond that. A thought echoed by both coaches at Real Madrid and with England was that his movement as a striker was never quite as good as it should have been. All those runs off the ball, coming short, going wide, opening channels and drawing defenders -- it was never a feature of his game, possibly because it was never taught.

He also didn't seem to have the "eye for goal," that mysterious ability to predict where the ball was going to go or how play was going to unfold. It's a trait that, probably, can't be taught but that so many of the great goal scorers share, from Radamel Falcao to Robbie Fowler, from Pippo Inzaghi to Ruud Van Nistelrooy. If you get on the end of chances regularly, you multiply your opportunities to score. Even when he was scoring a lot, it felt that Owen worked harder than other to get his shot off, that he rarely simply "popped up" the way some of the aforementioned "natural goal scorers" did.

It blends in to another flaw: vision. Owen was never a great passer or provider, not because he was necessarily selfish (most goal scorers need to be, to some degree) but because it simply wasn't a part of his game. His touch was good, but not exceptional, he had an awareness of where the goal was, but not always where his teammates were or, crucially where they might be.

There were two areas where he did excel and, with hindsight, he was perhaps over-reliant on them. One was his absurd pace, which often papered over cracks in his game. For a guy with such quick feet, you would have thought he'd have developed enough trickery to dribble or beat opponents with a body feint or a swerve, the kinds of technical things you maintain with age. Instead, he beat players in the most basic way: knock the ball past them, chase after it and outrun them. While he had his youth and his speed, it worked a charm; once he lost it, he didn't have enough of a Plan B.

The other quality was his finishing. Which was, simply put, dead-eye stuff. He never seemed flustered, he never rushed a shot, he usually struck the ball cleanly. That, perhaps, is the one characteristic he possesses even today. The problem, though, is that great finishing isn't enough if you no longer can get into goal-scoring positions and receive the ball with a chance to shoot.

One theory doing the rounds is that, as a kid, Owen fell victim to coaches who valued results over development. It was far easier to tell him to play on the shoulder of the last defender and get someone to just lump the ball into space for him to run on to than to work with him so he could develop a well-rounded game. This allowed him to score lots of goals and it allowed his youth coaches to look extremely clever because they got results. It didn't do too much for him though when he got into the first team.

And, in fact, when he did break into Liverpool, his managers -- Roy Evans and then Gerard Houllier -- seem to ride his strengths rather than work on his weaknesses. They may have had a valid excuse -- they needed points straight away, they weren't there to teach him -- and in the short run it may have worked. But the deficiencies were clear, even at the England level. Indeed, when you consider that for several years he overlapped with Alan Shearer in his pomp and the pair never seemed to forge a reliable partnership it becomes pretty obvious that something was wrong.

At the same time, he made some decisions that -- again with the benefit of hindsight -- he might have handled differently. Despite coming through the ranks at Liverpool, he never fully developed a rapport with the fan base in the way the likes of Fowler, Steven Gerrard or Jamie Carragher did. He seemed detached, often preoccupied with something else. When he did speak out, he felt plastic and corporate.

He didn't help matters when he let his contract run down, basically forcing Liverpool to sell him to Real Madrid for a cut-price $11 million in the summer of 2004, because he only had a year left on his deal. At Real, he scored 13 goals, many of them in garbage-time, either after coming on as a sub or as a late score in a blowout.

At the end of the season, with Real ready to move him on, he made another huge blunder. He opted for Newcastle, the only club willing to honor his enormous contract. This was a side with a passionate fanbase, but also one which had finished 14th the year before and where overspending and mismanagement were already rife. The fact that he never seemed to embrace the northeast of England did not help. The stories of him commuting by helicopter may have been untrue, but what is true is that he often made a four hour round trip commute from his home in Cheshire. Injuries and a bad team -- Newcastle were relegated in 2008-09 -- did the rest.

That summer he put out a DVD highlight his skills as a way of marketing himself to prospective employers. It felt rather pathetic.

Manchester United gave three seasons on a pay-as-you-play deal and he moved through Old Trafford like a ghost, making just six league starts. Then came this year's epilogue, at Stoke, where he has played a grand total of 70 league minutes.

He's now trying to carve out some kind of media career and has started a blog, though, frankly, he comes across as distant and anodyne. A source close to him I spoke to blames the fact that he doesn't have a "natural fan base" at any club, despite having played for three of the most popular in England. He claims Liverpool fans resent him (also because some see him as being responsible for Fowler's demise), Newcastle fans felt cold-shouldered by him and to United supporters he was about as relevant as Gabriel Obertan. If only Owen had been marketed better, he says.

But maybe that was part of the problem off the pitch. Too often he felt like someone who was being "marketed" and "packaged" as a superstar. That, added to his injuries and his one-dimensional nature on the pitch -- and his lack of improvement from the time he was 18 -- ensure you're left wondering what might have been.

For my part, I chose to remember him at his finest. I recall a game in Toulouse, England versus Romania, at the 1998 World Cup. With England 1-0 down, 18-year-old Owen came on and, in the space of 18 minutes, hit the post and notched the equalizer. Romania still won, 2-1, thanks to a dazzling run by Dan Petrescu, but I can still hear the words of a now-departed veteran journalist sitting next to me in the press box.

This was a grizzled, grumpy old ink-stained wretch. A guy who tended to bark rather than speak. A man who had been to every World Cup since 1958.

"You know I don't like this game anymore, it's just a job and every year I feel like retiring," he said afterward, taking a drag from a cigarette. "But then I see something like this kid Owen and my heart warms again. Just like it did in 1958 when I saw Pele."

His heart was, no doubt, warmed a few days later, when Owen scored that brilliant goal against Argentina. Sadly, it wasn't long thereafter that his career began to dip and continued to do so until the present.

ESPNFC.com

Great piece on Michael Owen.

I like Gabriele Marcotti but I think this is a poor article by someone who saw little of his career. That he 'rarely popped up' is ridiculous considering a lot of the goals he scored for England was by doing just that. To disregard his Real goals as 'garbage time' is pathetic as well. When you score, you score. Doesn't matter when it was. By Marcotti's logic every sub should be doing that. Career decisions and injuries is what did it for him. To criticise him as a player, because he was and still has been England's only world class striker of the last 20 years, is moronic. And then to claim we resented him because of the demise of Robbie Fowler? Don't get me started. Idiotic article at times with an attitude of a low grade tabloid journalist.

Yeah I'm still quite protective about Owen when it comes to his ability. At the peak of his powers he was an incredible player. There weren't many things that he couldn't do on a football pitch that were important to his game. Being in the right place at the right time was one of his strengths.

Question is; who will be his dance partner on strictly next year? I'm going for Flavia.

Better not be her, or the ever lovely Mrs Jordan.
Give him Kristina then Joe Calzaghi can knock 7 shades out of him for flirting with her.

I like Gabriele Marcotti but I think this is a poor article by someone who saw little of his career. That he 'rarely popped up' is ridiculous considering a lot of the goals he scored for England was by doing just that. To disregard his Real goals as 'garbage time' is pathetic as well. When you score, you score. Doesn't matter when it was. By Marcotti's logic every sub should be doing that. Career decisions and injuries is what did it for him. To criticise him as a player, because he was and still has been England's only world class striker of the last 20 years, is moronic. And then to claim we resented him because of the demise of Robbie Fowler? Don't get me started. Idiotic article at times with an attitude of a low grade tabloid journalist.

Regarding 'the demise of Robbie Fowler', he claims it was some source that said that, apparently. I do agree that no set of fans embrace him these days, even though he's played for 3 of the most popular clubs in the country.

As for Owen's limitations, I partially agree with Marcotti. I don't think he's spot on saying Owen didn't have an "eye for a goal" (though his definition of "eye for a goal" is probably different than mine), but I do think Owen was over reliant on pace and never fully developed as expected. Of course, injuries played a part on that, but I don't think it was only injuries.

I disagree with you that "when you score, you score". Well, in terms of statistics that's quite right, but there's a big difference in scoring the first goal in a big game or against some smaller side, or when the game is already pretty much won and the opponents have given up... I wouldn't bother checking, but if memory serves me right, that's how Owen scored most of his goals for Real Madrid.

Regarding 'the demise of Robbie Fowler', he claims it was some source that said that, apparently. I do agree that no set of fans embrace him these days, even though he's played for 3 of the most popular clubs in the country.

As for Owen's limitations, I partially agree with Marcotti. I don't think he's spot on saying Owen didn't have an "eye for a goal" (though his definition of "eye for a goal" is probably different than mine), but I do think Owen was over reliant on pace and never fully developed as expected. Of course, injuries played a part on that, but I don't think it was only injuries.

I disagree with you that "when you score, you score". Well, in terms of statistics that's quite right, but there's a big difference in scoring the first goal in a big game or against some smaller side, or when the game is already pretty much won and the opponents have given up... I wouldn't bother checking, but if memory serves me right, that's how Owen scored most of his goals for Real Madrid.

But there's no doubt that through his career he's always been a 'big game player', the goals he's scored at every club he's been at (bar Stoke), he's always scored vital goals, off the top of my head, FA Cup '01, vs Barca (I believe it was the winner) and for the mancs vs City. Not to mention his England career, his goal record was phenomenal and he should have gone on to become the record goal-scorer really, but injuries did for him in the end.

Personally, I admire Owen for what he did for us and he is up there with the best strikers I've seen at the club, he was unbelievable for a few years and his finishing was always done in such calm manner.

Regarding 'the demise of Robbie Fowler', he claims it was some source that said that, apparently. I do agree that no set of fans embrace him these days, even though he's played for 3 of the most popular clubs in the country.

As for Owen's limitations, I partially agree with Marcotti. I don't think he's spot on saying Owen didn't have an "eye for a goal" (though his definition of "eye for a goal" is probably different than mine), but I do think Owen was over reliant on pace and never fully developed as expected. Of course, injuries played a part on that, but I don't think it was only injuries.

I disagree with you that "when you score, you score". Well, in terms of statistics that's quite right, but there's a big difference in scoring the first goal in a big game or against some smaller side, or when the game is already pretty much won and the opponents have given up... I wouldn't bother checking, but if memory serves me right, that's how Owen scored most of his goals for Real Madrid.

Well I recall a couple of 1-0 wins where he scored the winning goal (one match in the Champions League in 04 I recall as well). The stats here don't look too bad for Owen at Real. It doesn't really support Marcotti's view. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004%E2%80%9305_Real_Madrid_C.F._season

Owen suffered at Real because he wasn't marketable as a 'galactico'. Raul was ridiculously starting ahead of him that season despite being well below Owen's ability because he was. They went through something like three managers that season and each time Owen appeared to be edging in to a permanent space he found himself firmly put back on the bench. Real could have been a success and in hindsight he should have stayed on a year to avoid the pathetic move to Newcastle. Any sane club would have kept Owen on for another season and even made him a permanent starter but then again that was Real Madrid. Idiotic move in the first place for Owen and one that he would deeply regret. I don't think he would have stayed at Liverpool much longer but he could have made a better career move than that. I think Owen was a misunderstood player but at the same time was a player who clearly misunderstood himself. If there was one player I would wind back the clock for it would be him. Deeply regretful having seen his career turn out the way it did since he returned to England in 05. Regretful for me it must be said as he was an idol when I was young.

Great article.

By a red:

PARADISE LOST: THE SAID DEMISE OF MICHAEL OWEN

By Mike Nevin
 
Michael Owen’s announcement this week of his retirement from professional football at the age of 33, brought in equal measure, howls of derision and hoots of laughter from the same Liverpool supporters who once proclaimed a wonder kid of half that age. How did this happen? Sixteen and a half years is a long time in life, even more so in sport, but it took a fraction of that extended football existence for Michael Owen to descend from hero to zero in the eyes of The Kop.

The boy from Hawarden, born in Chester but schooled at Liverpool FC since the age of 12, burst onto the scene on a spring night at Wimbledon, his goal in 2-1 defeat scant consolation on the evening the Reds surrendered outside hopes of the 1997 Premier League title with just one match remaining. Owen made an immediate impression under the Selhurst Park floodlights – one of startling acceleration born of a sinewy, underdeveloped frame inside a baggy, red jersey. That night, he became the youngest goalscorer in Liverpool’s history at the age of 17 years 143 days.
 
 
 
To seasoned watchers of the club, Owen’s entrance came as no surprise. His name had resonated in the Anfield corridors ever since he scored a virtuoso goal for England Schoolboys against Scotland at St James’ Park. After a remarkable solo slalom from the half-way line, he skipped past the last in a series of desperate lunges to lash a right-foot shot into the top corner.
 
 
 
Only months before his premature arrival on the first-team scene, consecutive hat-tricks against Manchester United and Crystal Palace propelled the adolescent Reds into an FA Youth Cup Final against West Ham. Absent from the Upton Park first leg, Owen’s equaliser in the return game led to a 2-1 triumph as a Hammers’ side featuring Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard were vanquished. Owen – and a notable team-mate in Jamie Carragher – celebrated Liverpool’s first FA Youth Cup, hoisted on the back of his 11 goals in 5 matches. If further proof was needed of his suitability for scoring goals for the Kop, he bore a boyhood parallel with the great Ian Rush and Robbie Fowler – Evertonianism.
 
 
 
After a summer during which Roy Evans presumably tried to feed him up on Shankly’s legendary diet of steaks, a still-spindly Owen was in the starting line-up, alongside experienced new arrival Karl-Heinz Riedle, for the first game of the new season. The venue was again Selhurst Park, baking under a demonic August sun. As the pitch-side temperature nudged 100 degrees, Owen kept cool to slot home a nerveless penalty and secure Liverpool a share of the opening day spoils.
 
 
 
In the temporary absence of Robbie Fowler – injured, but still at the peak of his powers – Liverpudlians could scarcely believe their luck. Another goal machine had evidently rolled off the Melwood production line. The fans, quick to recognise such a raw talent, serenaded the teenager with a tune steeped in the history of slavery, as “Michael Row the Boat Ashore” became Michael Owen Scores the Goals. Hallelujah.
 
 
 
In the next away game, another calm strike at a rain lashed Ewood Park and an exuberant, unrehearsed, celebration – his white number 18 a blur on the back of a dancing red shirt in front of an adoring Darwen End – cemented a growing crush bestowed by the faithful on this new kid on the block. Three weeks later Owen silenced a Glaswegian cauldron with a UEFA Cup opener at Celtic Park – his absurdly cool finish a prime example of unthinking, nerveless youth.
 
 
 
Remarkably, the little striker had to wait until November for his first league goal at Anfield; a tap-in to complete a 4-0 rout of Spurs. Owen’s emergence masked an indifferent start to the season as Liverpool lay sixth, but such was the verve and promise of this amazing young talent that as Christmas approached, it was the image of Michael Owen that began to appear on the dubious Liverpool merchandise sold by the street sellers outside Anfield.
 
 
 
The author of this piece was sufficiently seduced, or should I say taken in, to award the middle names “Michael and Owen” to my first-born son on 22nd December 1997. Fittingly, Owen scored both the Liverpool goals either side of his birth. When the Christening came round on a Sunday in February, this proud – nay smug – Liverpool dad was basking in the glow of an Owen hat-trick at Sheffield Wednesday the day before. When the priest read out those middle names, Reds guffawed and Blues winced.
 
 
 
*The moral of this particular little tale is to confirm that pride comes before a fall and in later years the words “deed” and “poll” have cropped up time and again during dad and lad conversations.
 
 
 
Of course, none of us had a crystal ball to foresee any of Michael’s future employers; and as the 1997-98 season drew to a close the only dilemma Owen presented was that his fearless brilliance was beginning to rival the sainted Robbie Fowler for our affections. An impetuous but nasty foul on Peter Schmeichel, not long after scoring a Reds equalizer, saw Owen receive an Old Trafford red card which, if anything, saw his adulation elevated to a new plane. Meanwhile, Fowler sat out the final third of the season after falling badly on his ankle during the Anfield derby.
 
 
 
With a World Cup approaching, Owen’s inclusion in the England squad for France ’98 was inevitable. It was only later we discovered Glen Hoddle was barking mad, but only a certified loon could ignore the joint-top Premier League goalscorer (18 goals). So, the Liverpool teenager carried “the hopes of a nation” with his hand luggage on the plane to Marseille. He sat out the opening win against Tunisia, but came off the bench to equalize against Romania in a losing cause in the second group game. England progressed to the knock-out phase by virtue of a win in their last game against Columbia only to draw the might of Argentina in the round of 16.
 
 
 
However, Michael Owen’s celebrated goal in St Etienne, which needs no further description here, was the trigger for an extremely hurtful affair with the national team. In the wake of a typically “heroic” defeat for the “Three Lions”, the star of an, admittedly, pulsating World Cup encounter, was labelled “England’s Michael Owen” almost overnight.
 
 
 
Michael didn’t belong to us anymore; his head well and truly turned, his ears cupped to the whispers of England. The seeds had been sown for acrimonious divorce some years later. Nevertheless, just like any fledgling marriage encountering early difficulties, the cracks remained hidden for a good few years. Liverpool fans and Michael Owen were still due many happy days together. For some time the frisson endured.
 
 
 
As if to underline his national hero status in the summer of 1998, the opening game of the new season, with Liverpool now under the flawed Evans/Houllier axis, saw the sight of a late Owen winner at The Dell celebrated by a number of Southampton fans in the home crowd. Bizarre!
 
 
 
In the away game that followed, at Newcastle, Ruud Gullit’s “sexy football” was ruthlessly exposed by a Michael Owen at this electric best with a first-half hat-trick. The third goal saw Owen scamper away in trademark fashion, gliding past Philippe Albert’s attempt to chop him in half, before clipping sublimely with the outside of his right-foot into the top corner. I can vividly recall my pogo-ing celebration while my mate screeched, “F***ing hell, he’s the best I’ve ever seeeeeeeeeen!”
 
 
 
When I watched it back on TV to appreciate the beauty and clinical precision of Owen’s goal, I cringed at his “hand-rubbing” celebration shared with Paul Ince. Gone was joyous, uninhibited dance of last season’s tyro, now replaced by an affected, choreographed routine that was a revealing portent to future greed.
 
 
 
As Owen’s second full season wore on, and Evans made way for Houllier to assume total control in the dug-out, he began to suffer niggles to a hamstring until an April evening in Leeds when, accelerating on to a Steve McManaman through ball, he pulled up lame in spectacular fashion. From the distant away end, it appeared his searing burst had been curtailed by the work of a sniper in the stands as Owen ground to an agonising halt clutching his backside.
 
 
 
It could be argued that, after this injury, Michael Owen was never the same player. On returning to fitness he was forced to slightly reinvent his game. He worked on his weak left foot – toil that would be rewarded two years later on a sunny afternoon in Cardiff – and improved his heading. He packed on muscle to protect his flimsy hamstrings and developed an ability to shield the ball with his back to goal and bring others into play.
 
 
 
While a fading Robbie Fowler, still adored by the supporters, fought injury and rumour, Owen, alongside Emile Heskey, became the spearhead of Houllier’s emergent team that homed in on a cup treble in the spring of 2001.
 
 
 
However, those dreams looked to be in tatters with Arsenal steamrollering Liverpool in the most one-sided FA Cup Final in years. As the final minutes ticked by, Owen suddenly came to life and snatched an improbable equaliser. Galvanised, Liverpool sought a winning goal on the counter attack as Patrik Berger floated a visionary long pass in Owen’s general direction. In one seamless electric movement, Owen floated past Lee Dixon and Tony Adams, transferred the ball on to his left peg and struck his shot unerringly across David Seaman into the tiniest of specks of visible netting in the far corner of the goal. Pandemonium. A moment made all the more memorable for the writer of this piece, as I found myself enjoying a topless embrace with the Scouse fella who played the doctor in Peak Practice. It was a very warm day.
 
 
 
Cardiff 2001 was the zenith of Michael Owen’s Liverpool career and, cart-wheeling in ecstatic celebration, the summit of his connection with the travelling Kop. As ITV commentator Clive Tyldesley cried, Michael Owen had won the FA Cup for Liverpool “all by himself”. The trouble was, he knew it.
 
 
 
To complete Liverpool’s treble, continental acclaim and a UEFA Cup followed on a glorious, if rather wet night in Dortmund four days later. Owen was crowned European Footballer of the Year, the first Briton since Kevin Keegan to win the award, and his head swelled to the size of the Ballon d’Or itself.
 
 
 
A burgeoning England career, which would amount to 40 goals in 89 appearances for the national team reached a peak with a stunning hat-trick in Munich as five goals scored by Anfield residents stripped the Germans naked in their own back yard. Only this week, Jamie Carragher spoke of how “pumped” Owen was for this World Cup qualifier; perhaps a revealing insight into his evolving career priorities.
 
 
 
Robbie Fowler’s Scouse sympathisers on the Kop, concerned at their hero’s gradual phasing out by Gerard Houllier, certainly perceived an extra devilment in Owen’s play while wearing the white of England. Whether this was true is open to debate, but Robbie Fowler’s eventual exit from Liverpool, in part due to Michael’s status as the Reds’ most reliable source of goals, did nothing to assuage a growing antipathy towards the “woolyback”, Owen.
 
 
 
If there was an increasingly strained relationship between Owen and Liverpool’s fan base, it didn’t seem to bother him as Houllier’s team, with Fowler now departed, launched a credible but ultimately failed assault on the league title in 2002. Liverpool also reached the quarter finals of the revamped Champions League, but a hatful of missed chances by Owen in the away leg at Leverkusen put paid to a looming semi-final against Manchester United.
 
 
 
By 2003 Houllier’s five year plan had begun to unravel. A League Cup win in Cardiff, courtesy of Owen’s clinching late goal fired past United’s Fabien Barthez, papered over the cracks. The following season saw some of the most stultifying football in recent Anfield memory as Liverpool limped to a fortuitous 4th placed finish, but it wasn’t enough to save an ailing Houllier his job – the Frenchman “mutually consented” from his post.
 
 
 
One of the incoming Rafael Benitez’s first tasks in the L4 hot seat was to address Michael Owen’s impending freedom of contract. The club had been stung previously when Steve McManaman arguably bettered himself with a gratis “Bosman” transfer to Real Madrid.
 
 
 
With just a year to run on his existing deal, perhaps Benitez thought a new dawn and the exciting arrivals of Xabi Alonso and Luis Garcia would be enough to persuade Owen to sign a new Reds’ agreement. Rafa was wrong. Madrid came calling again, with a paltry offer of £8m, and the lure of the Galacticos saw the disaffected Owen dig in his heels. Suddenly, with Owen a sullen presence on the bench in Graz for a Champions League qualifier, the cat was out the bag. Michael Owen’s time at Anfield was over. Friendships built with the likes of Gerrard, Carragher from their juvenile days at Melwood were cast aside, and the new man Benitez left in the lurch, in favour of a lucrative move abroad. It hurt, but for whatever reason the torrent of tears that followed Fowler’s exit to Leeds never flowed at the departure of Michael Owen.
 
 
 
His time in Spain as a bit-part player in a Madrid cast numbering class acts Roberto Carlos, Zinedine Zidane, Luis Figo, and “Fat” Ronaldo, saw a respectable number of goals, but mainly from the bench. The move didn’t quite work as Owen envisaged and with another World Cup looming his England place was under threat through a lack of first team football. Owen’s representatives were angling for a move back to England, ideally to the familiar surroundings of Anfield where, joyously, the European Cup now lay in permanent residence. Owen’s treachery saw him miss out on the “Miracle of Istanbul” but now, all of a sudden, he wanted a piece of the “Rafalution”. The beautiful irony wasn’t lost on thousands of jilted Liverpudlians.
 
 
 
Madrid’s asking price was in the region £15m – a sum Liverpool were not prepared to pay having been fleeced just 12 months previously. Benitez, at the behest of Gerrard and Carragher was willing to bring Michael back but only at the right price. Owen clearly had never played a hand of poker in his life, and desperate to secure a move back into the Premiership limelight, folded in this game of brinkmanship, when Newcastle United waded in with a bid to match Real’s valuation.
 
 
 
Somehow, Michael Owen had ended up as the latest exhibit on the steps of St James’ Park being paraded to a notional “Geordie Nation”. A declining, increasingly injury-ravaged Owen failed miserably to cement a place in the hearts of those success-starved Newcastle fans; hardly surprising with a return of just 26 strikes over 4 years in the North East. His return equated to each goal in black and white costing £570,000, to say nothing of an astronomical wage plus helicopter fuel as he literally whirred his way into training each day.
 
 
 
By 2009, Owen was Liverpool’s forgotten man; a joke figure barely registering in the minds of Kopites who were watching a Benitez team at its peak and salivating over their new love, Fernando Torres. Michael Owen, not yet in his 30’s – bounced out of Newcastle – was a free agent whoring himself around football agents with the aid an embarrassing 32 page brochure in which he comically described himself as “The Ambassador, The Athlete, The Icon.”
 
 
 
The once mighty “wonderkid” had clearly fallen a long way, but for our fans, if any goodwill lingered for a lad who scored 158 goals bearing the Liver Bird on his chest before their separation, Owen was about to ruin all that and deliver a Decree Nisi to Liverpool FC. Alex Ferguson must have guzzled two bottles of red reading Owen’s glossy catalogue and now the deteriorating crock was signing for Manchester F***ing United on a free transfer!
 
 
 
The sight of Owen, hitherto still a claimant to a place in the Anfield Hall of Fame, wearing a United shirt was a sickener. No player has transferred directly between the clubs since Phil Chisnall in 1967, but this felt a lot worse. This was the ultimate betrayal. I’ve called Michael Owen a lot of things in my time; descending from genius to traitor to mercenary, but now he’s just referred to as the “Little sh*t”.
 
 
 
Despite a winning goal in a League Cup Final against Villa, and a dramatic derby winner over City at Old Trafford, his declining talent would never be enough to win over a United support that forever associates him with the stain of Liverpool.
 
 
 
Laying claim to an elusive yet highly tenuous Premier League Winners medal in 2011 through a handful of substitute appearances, Owen plumbed new depths by goading Liverpool fans with his “achievement” via the medium of Twitter.
 
 
 
The lad who once had the planet at his feet was let loose in the world of social media operating with the élan of a sewer rat; destroying what little remained of his credibility. For Michael Owen, formerly of Liverpool and England, such behaviour was a far cry from his sporting exploits on the fields of Cardiff, Dortmund, St Etienne and Munich.
 
 
 
If we are looking for an apt way to conclude on a most spectacular fall from footballing grace – at least in the eyes of those who watched this once-breathtaking, coltish talent from the steps of The Kop – perhaps there are no better words to finish with than – “Stoke City”.
 
 
 
Except to add – Michael Owen, you’re dead to me, and have been for a while.

http://www.theanfieldwrap.com/2013/03/paradise-lost-the-said-demise-of-michael-owen/

Bet deep down he massively regrets leaving us despite what he says. If he had stayed I expect he'd have gone onto become our all time top scorer as well as England's all time top scorer and well over 100 caps. His last England game was in like 2007 and that was 40 in 89, he'd have smashed that goal record.

Just watching his interview on Football Focus. His arrogance is astounding considering the errors he made to F**k his own career up.

Micky Owen flirted with success and was on the cusp but his delusions of grandeur and woeful indecision ensured the flirtation was just that.

Just watching his interview on Football Focus. His arrogance is astounding considering the errors he made to F**k his own career up.

Yep, he always was arrogant. In the end that was his downfall.

Just compare his interview on the show to that of Sami Hyypia (Liverpool legend) who comes across as very modest and humble.

He was a fantastic player. I loved him when he was here and he was my idol. I really can't bring myself to hate him like everyone else does. I hate the fact that he joined the scum, but he did so much for us, won us a trophy, played a vital part in our other ones, I just can't hate him.

Good player

Ruined by greed