Michael Owen the fully formed wonderkid
‘For me the only good thing to come out of the ’98 World Cup. Speed, cunning, balls.
I hope injury doesn’t destroy him’
Diego Maradona on Michael Owen in 1998
At aged 19 years and 8 days Michael Owen placed 4th on the 1998 Ballon d’Or list. This came some 6 months after Owen firmly announced himself as an international superstar following his breath-taking performances at the World Cup in France and half way through Owen being on the way to a second consecutive shared Premier League Golden Boot. He remains at numbers 1 & 2 as the youngest Golden Boot winner in the Premier League era, a full four years younger than his nearest rival. He also stands as the youngest top scorer in the English top division, beating Tommy Lawton in 37/38 by two months. For context in the Ballon d’Or list, at age 19 years and 5 months Lionel Messi placed joint 20th, at 19 years and 10 months, Cristiano Ronaldo placed joint 14th, 19 years and 3 month old Ronaldo placed 26th, Kylian Mbappe placed 7th at 18 years and 11 months and Wayne Rooney placed 8th at 19 years and 2 months. Michael Owen was undoubtably a historical phenomenon for his age.
Five months later, on the 12th April 1999 at Elland Road, Owen tore his hamstring, an injury, which in his words ‘would scar my entire career…from that day forward, it was a slow agonising decline.’ Owen admitted on BT sport, ‘once I did it once [his hamstring], I was gone.’ Prior to the injury at Elland Road, he claimed the Golden Boot every season he featured regularly. Post-injury he never won it again, despite scoring 1 more goal in both 01/02 & 02/03 than his Golden Boot seasons. Owen would adapt and sustain his career, going on to win the Ballon d’Or, aged just 22 years and 4 days, still the second youngest player ever to win this after Ronaldo. Following a 13th placed finish in 2002, Owen would never chart again and retired in 2013 aged 33. Owen confesses, ‘for the last 6 or 7 years…I was petrified of running…the worst thing was my instinct says what you’ve always done…but I think oh no you can’t, don’t…you’ve lost everything…I hated it, I couldn’t wait to retire, I wasn’t me.’
Although a teenager, Owen never really seemed a young player in footballing terms. Owen himself states, ‘I was bred to be a footballer.’ From the age of 6, Owen’s father, a former professional himself, was ‘pestering the local youth football team to let him play,’ despite the fact ‘you couldn’t play any kind of structured, official football until you were about ten years old.’ Inevitably Owen’s father prevailed and Owen would play, ‘three or four years younger and half the size of everyone else,’ and ‘score more often than not.’ At this age Owen’s father ‘knew I had everything: balance, composure-all the attributes needed to go all the way in the game.’ As such ‘he had this belief that wasn’t just the kind of hopefulness that any parent might have when their kid shows a decent level of aptitude towards something. He planned my life, our lives with the certainty that I’d be a professional footballer at the core of everything. As sure as the sun rose each morning, it was going to happen.’
An extreme example of this is Owen recounting every week his father would go to the butchers and buy a ‘massive lump of steak for my dinner, just my dinner.’ Owen’s family would be having more standard meals, while he was ‘beefing up because I was going to be a professional footballer.’ Owen notes, as well as the physical impact, ‘the mental strength I took from what he was prepared to do on my behalf,’ was significant. On one occasion he overheard his father telling his friends that there was no doubt he would play for England, at which point, ‘a few of them clubbed together shortly afterwards to place a bet.’ It is striking at the foresight, given the player he became, that Owen’s father recalls watching him at aged six and thinking, ‘if he develops any real pace we’ve got a real player on our hands.’ With the family in a ‘perilous’ financial situation Owen recalls, ‘by the time I was twelve or thirteen, it wasn’t just my dad who knew that I represented the only conceivable way out for the family. I knew it too.’
Owen describes himself as being ‘as self aware as a young kid has the capacity to be…when you come to the realisation that you’re exceptional at something; that feeling in turn makes your whole life better and confidence comes with that.’ Owen’s achievements fully justified his confidence. Aged 11, he broke Ian Rush’s age group goalscoring record of 72 goals by scoring 92, ‘to say I was a million miles ahead of everyone else would be an understatement.’ Steven Gerrard remembers how ‘Michael stood out the most. Even aged 8 he was obviously special, a star in the making. Everyone knew it, he was put on this earth to destroy goalkeepers…I was gobsmacked by his unbelievable talent.’ The two made for a formidable pairing at youth level, ‘Michael realised I was a good passer, so we quickly teamed up…we still joke about our days at Liverpool U-12s when we battered teams. Michael would always say, ‘every time Stevie got the ball he would pass to me.’ To which I reply, ‘’and every time I did, Michael scored.’ Owen concurs, ‘it was almost embarrassing at times.’ Operating at an elevated level in comparison to his peers gave him the impetus attempt to introduce variation to his finishing and take risks, ‘all my goals at that age were virtually identical, a ball over the top, followed by a quick sprint and a finish.’ ‘This glut of opportunities gave me scope to experiment a great deal in how I finished…I could hone my craft.’ He partly attributed his ruthless finishing ability to these years practicing different types of goals, giving him a library of options to utilise as the situation demanded.
Owen was used to standing apart, even treated differently at home, he was feted as a young player across the youth scene in England. He doubts ‘there was a young footballer in the world in such high demand at the time.’ It is worth speculating whether a sense of detachment from fan bases of the clubs Owen played for, may be linked to the manner in which he was professionalised and focused towards reaching the top from such an early age. Owen states, ‘it’s not easy to admit, but I’d be lying if I didn’t…wherever I went I was self centred…because more than most I was driven to be the best…there was always a part of me that felt, even in a 3-1 defeat. If I scored the one goal. I’d still think, well at least I did my job.’ Owen also explained, ‘when I became a professional footballer, I ceased to be a fan.’ Owen was incredibly focused on being what he has been brought up to be since he was six years old, miles better than anyone else.
Jamie Carragher recalls Steve Heighway, youth team coach, describing Owen as ‘the best 16 year old I’ve ever seen, and he’ll play for the first team at 17.’ Heighway was proved right as he scored on his debut a year later. Owen remembers feeling a sense of calm and focus, having to feign being ‘excited or…really proud...I just said [I was] because it was easy to…I approached…[it] just like every other game I’d ever played…I had just one focus: I wanted to score.’ Into his professional career he retained the speed superiority to be able to wait for the ball over the top, sprint free and finish. Owen’s ability and mindset that he was destined to be a top level footballer, meant that when he did emerge as a professional he would not miss a beat and came fully formed, ready to dominate the Premier League as he had youth football. As Owen states, ‘I genuinely felt like I had no equals, never felt like pressure.’ He rarely sought out information about centre backs he was due to face, safe in the knowledge he could out pace any defender. Jamie Carragher put it that ‘Mo was the best player in the side the day he broke into the first team.’ Glenn Hoddle recalls, ‘the first time I saw him…he stood out that much. He was doing things some twenty eight and twenty nine years olds struggle with, yet he was only seventeen…his pace and timing together make all the difference.’
Football writer, Moesquared in a scouting report of young Michael Owen concurs, ‘that his game was mainly slanted towards goal scoring and attacking space in behind…his quickness was frightning….defending Owen was akin in some ways to having to game plan against a road runner.’ Michael Cox describes Owen as a ‘revolutionary’ in an English football landscape dominated by ‘stereotypically tall strong target men.’ A ‘newfound love of technical football,’ however, ‘necessitated a different mould of striker…strikers who could sprint in behind the opposition defence.’ Owen’s timing was as perfect as his impeccable instinct in the box. He was able to exploit an era whereby midfield passers capable of threading through balls were emerging while ‘centre backs were built for battles in the air.’ Leaving Owen able to ‘score easy goals by exploiting their sluggishness on the ground.’ In terms of the ease at which he could exploit his gifts, Owen was still playing youth football. Cox explains, ‘he essentially played Premier League games like they were U11 games…little had changed by the time Owen reached Liverpool’s first team.’ As Owen said of his debut goal, ‘it may as well have been Deeside Leisure Centre.’
Owen in his autobiography, outlines that kids ‘eventually…reach a standard where they’re starved of opportunities and/or no longer stand out. When they no longer shine, discouragement often follows. And then they become cautious. None of this happened to me.’ And it never did until that afternoon at Elland Road in 1999. This culminated in the process whereby Owen’s body would eventually be ravaged by injury to the extent he was finally discouraged and cautious and ‘wasn’t even putting himself in a position to run.’ He would over time become what he never had been in his life, ordinary.
The question the will inevitably hang over Michael Owen’s career given his meteoric rise, followed by an injury-fuelled fall, is ‘what if?’ A question Owen himself rejects, ‘My view is that I don’t care whether I was very good at eighteen years of age or thirty. It just happened that I was ready to be the best I could possibly be at a young age…There’s no wrong way of winning a Ballon d’Or. I’d reached the peak of my career. It just happened to be between the ages of eighteen and twenty two.’ Michael Cox’s assertion is that the running onto balls behind defenders style of play of his youth, may have been unsustainable regardless, ‘it wasn’t simply that Owen was now slower, it was that opponents…defended deep. During the 1990s, defences were accustomed to pushing up to keep aerially dominant strikers away from the box. Increasingly strikers’ key weapon was pace…defenders retreated towards their own goal. The defenders who continued to play a high line, became increasingly fast.’ Owen said his toughest opponents were ‘the quick ones.’ Cox feels ‘Owen was another victim of his own success’, by leading a generation of quicker strikers which forced defences to change. Moesquared explains that, ‘even after his athleticism started to wane, he was able to retool his game just enough…that helped him maintain elite production 1998-2002, while noting ‘His playmaking and lack of link play does hurt his portability a bit, although that is at least somewhat counteracted with how good his movement was.’ Alex Ferguson has outlined that he feels Owen’s explosion into football meant he ‘lost out on time to develop technically and physically.’ Nevertheless, his Ballon d’Or in 2001 and continued impressive goal scoring record well into what would be the twilight of his career, certainly suggest Owen did have the tools to adjust his game post injury. Owen believed he was able to improve aspects of his game, stating in 2002, ‘I’ve got a much better left foot than I had then. I can head the ball much better than I did then. I can drop off and hold up the ball better than I did then.’ Owen recalls playing ‘some of the best football of his career’, under Kevin Keegan in a deeper role as ‘a kind of advanced attacker midfielder’ in 2008. Keegan even floated the idea of Owen as a ‘sitting midfielder’, telling him ‘you’ve got a great football brain.’
As a result of his professionalised upbringing in footballing development, Owen’s other great strength was his mindset and instincts. ‘Between my ears’, Owen explained’, ‘I’m strong.’ Sven Goran Eriksen described him as ‘ice cold’ and a ‘killer’. Simon Kuper watching late era Owen for England in 2007, observed that he appeared ‘to be coincidentally loitering by himself’ prior to the ball dropping to him for a typical poachers goal. Owen was blessed with what he calls, ‘an ability to know where the ball is going to be’.
Perhaps Owen puts it best in explaining, ‘It just happened that I was ready to be the best I could possibly be at a young age.’ Michael Owen can certainly rival any teenage footballer throughout history and managed to combine the youthful fearlessness of a teenager, with the killer instinct of a veteran. Owen was simultaneously raw and exciting while being polished and chillingly efficient. A product of electrifying talent, upbringing and his historical context. No-one who witnessed it will ever forget Michael Owen in his breakthrough years.