Michael Owen

• 1. Introduction

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  Michael Owen scored one of the most talked-about goals in England's football history at the age of eighteen. Running from near the halfway line against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup, he beat two defenders and drove the ball past the goalkeeper to put his country ahead. By the end of that year, a public vote had made him the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Three years later, he would become the last Englishman to win the Ballon d'Or, the award for the world's best footballer.

  But Owen's story is as much about what was taken from him as what he achieved. Recurring hamstring problems shadowed nearly every season of his career. A single moment at the 2006 World Cup, just 51 seconds into a group game against Sweden, ended his tournament and ushered in a long decline. How does a player who was being monitored by scouts before he was eleven years old, and who had broken Ian Rush's goalscoring record before he was twelve, navigate the gap between extraordinary early promise and the physical cost of being built for pure speed?

• 2. A Boy From Chester

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  Terry Owen, Michael's father, had played professional football for clubs including Chester City and Everton, and he introduced his son to the game at seven. By ten, young Michael was attracting attention from some of the nation's leading scouts. He attended Rector Drew Primary School in Hawarden, Flintshire, and the talent was unmistakable early.

  At eight, he was selected for the Deeside Area Primary School's Under-11 team despite being too young. At nine he was captain of that side. Then came the record that announced him to the wider footballing world: in a single season, still only ten years old, he scored 97 goals for the Deeside team, surpassing Ian Rush's record by 25 goals. He also broke Gary Speed's appearance record for the same team, having played in all three seasons since the age of eight.

  A local physical education teacher, Howard Roberts, had persuaded the league to allow an underage player to turn out for the youth team of Mold Alexandra when Owen was just eight. He scored on that debut, a 2-0 win over Bagillt, and finished his first season with 34 goals in 24 games. When the major clubs eventually came calling, it was a personal letter from Steve Heighway, Liverpool's youth development officer, that made the difference. Terry Owen recalled that Heighway wrote them a letter that was love at first sight for Michael from day one, and Owen signed with Liverpool.

• 3. Liverpool's Youngest

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  Owen signed a professional contract with Liverpool on his seventeenth birthday, having already established himself as a dominant figure in the club's youth setup. In the 1995-96 FA Youth Cup campaign, he scored a hat-trick against Manchester United in the quarter-finals, another hat-trick in a 4-2 first-leg semi-final win over Crystal Palace, and then scored twice to help Liverpool overturn a 3-0 deficit in the second leg to win 7-5 on aggregate. Liverpool then beat West Ham United in the final, the first time the club had won the FA Youth Cup in its history.

  On the 6th of May 1997, Owen came on as a substitute against Wimbledon at Selhurst Park and scored on his first-team debut. He was Liverpool's youngest ever goalscorer. The following season he replaced the injured Robbie Fowler as the club's first-choice striker and won the Premier League Golden Boot with 18 goals, finishing third in the PFA Player of the Year voting behind Dennis Bergkamp and Tony Adams. He also won the PFA Young Player of the Year award and signed a five-year contract worth £2.5 million, a deal that made him the highest-paid teenager in the history of British football at £10,000 a week.

  He retained the Golden Boot the following season before a hamstring injury against Leeds United ended his campaign early on the 12th of April. The hamstring would become a recurring antagonist. Liverpool's game had been built around his explosive pace, feeding him through balls and long passes, and the strain of accelerating from static to full speed in split seconds eventually took its toll.

• 4. The Treble and the Ballon d'Or

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  The 2000-01 season brought the peak of Owen's Liverpool career. The club won the League Cup, the FA Cup, and the UEFA Cup, ending a six-year trophy drought, and Owen scored both goals in the FA Cup final against Arsenal, coming back from 1-0 down to win 2-1. Liverpool also won the Charity Shield and the UEFA Super Cup, becoming the first English club to win five trophies in one calendar year.

  In recognition of his performances that season, Owen received the Ballon d'Or, becoming the most recent English winner of the European Footballer of the Year award and the first since Kevin Keegan in 1979. Real Madrid president Florentino Perez had been pursuing Owen since as early as March 2002, declaring that the best players must play for Real Madrid. Liverpool manager Gerard Houllier was dismissive, saying that Real might be able to afford Ronaldo but they could not afford Michael Owen.

  On the 29th of December 2001, Owen scored his 100th goal for Liverpool in a league match against West Ham United. By April 2002, he had also scored his 100th Premier League goal, against West Bromwich Albion on the 26th of that month. He signed a four-year contract with Liverpool worth £70,000 a week during this period, making him one of the highest earners in the English top flight. Sam Allardyce, then managing Bolton Wanderers, said that stopping Michael Owen scoring put you 50 per cent towards getting a result at Anfield.

• 5. Real Madrid and Newcastle

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  After Gerard Houllier's final two seasons at Liverpool left the club trailing their title rivals, Owen opted not to renew his contract. Real Madrid signed him on the 13th of August 2004 for a fee of £8 million, with midfielder Antonio Nunez moving to Liverpool as a makeweight. He was officially presented with the number 11 shirt on the 14th of August and found himself playing alongside Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, and David Beckham, as well as established club figures such as Raul, Roberto Carlos, and Iker Casillas.

  Owen was frequently used as a substitute and drew criticism from fans and the Spanish press. A return to form came in October 2004, and on the 10th of April 2005 he scored Real's fourth goal in a 4-2 El Clasico win over Barcelona at the Santiago Bernabeu. He ended the season with 13 La Liga goals, the highest ratio of goals to minutes played that season. But when Real signed Brazilian forwards Robinho and Julio Baptista, Owen sought a return to England.

  Newcastle United paid a club record fee of £16.8 million for Owen on the 24th of August 2005, with some 20,000 fans at St James' Park for his unveiling. He was reportedly disappointed that Real had rejected a bid from Liverpool to re-sign him. He scored a perfect hat-trick in the 4-2 away win over West Ham United on the 17th of December, finding the net with his left foot, right foot, and head. But on the 31st of December 2005, he broke a metatarsal bone in his foot against Tottenham Hotspur and required two operations.

• 6. The World Cup Knee and Its Aftermath

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  After only 51 seconds of England's final group game against Sweden at the 2006 World Cup, Owen badly twisted his right knee and was stretchered from the pitch. A scan on the 21st of June confirmed he had torn the anterior cruciate ligament. He was sent home, his tournament over.

  The injury set off a lengthy legal and financial battle. Under the existing insurance arrangements, FIFA and the FA had been paying £50,000 of Owen's £110,000 weekly wages since the injury, totalling approximately £2 million by the time the case developed. By September 2006, Newcastle were threatening to sue the FA for a reported £20 million, a claim that included £10 million for buying Owen's replacement Obafemi Martins, £6.2 million towards his salary costs while injured, and further sums for depreciation of his contract and medical treatment. FIFA made a final offer of £1 million in February 2007; the club eventually settled for a figure between £6 million and £7 million from FIFA and the FA, declaring that a total of £10 million in overall compensation had been achieved.

  The case had a lasting effect on how England players are insured. The FA doubled its future coverage of England players to £100,000, and FIFA introduced a compensation fund for injuries sustained at World Cups. Owen himself admitted in March 2009 that all subsequent injuries he was sustaining traced back to returning prematurely from the 2006 knee injury. He made his comeback from the ACL in a behind-closed-doors friendly against Gretna on the 10th of April 2007, scoring after ten minutes.

• 7. Manchester United and Late Career

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  On the 3rd of July 2009, Owen signed a two-year deal with Manchester United, the great rivals of his first club Liverpool. He described the approach from manager Alex Ferguson as out of the blue. He was given the number 7 shirt, vacated by Cristiano Ronaldo's departure to Real Madrid, a shirt previously worn by players including George Best, Bryan Robson, Eric Cantona, and David Beckham.

  On the 20th of September 2009, Owen scored in the sixth minute of stoppage time against Manchester City to give United a 4-3 derby win, a goal he later ranked as one of the most important of his career. He also scored a hat-trick against VfL Wolfsburg on the 8th of December 2009 in the Champions League, his first since 2005. By the 2010-11 season, Owen had reached the number of league appearances required for a Premier League winners medal, his first title in fifteen seasons as a professional, when United drew 1-1 with Blackburn Rovers at Ewood Park on the 14th of May 2011.

  After Manchester United declined to renew his contract in May 2012, Owen joined Stoke City on the 4th of September 2012. He scored his first and only goal for Stoke on the 19th of January 2013 in a 3-1 defeat at Swansea City, becoming the seventh player to reach 150 Premier League goals. On the 19th of March 2013, he announced his retirement from playing, ending a career in which he scored 40 goals in 89 appearances for England, a record for England at the time of his retirement, placing him sixth in the all-time list behind Harry Kane, Wayne Rooney, Bobby Charlton, Gary Lineker, and Jimmy Greaves.

• 8. Life After Football

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  Since retiring, Owen has worked as a pundit for TNT Sports and Amazon Prime Video. His deepest post-career passion has been horse racing. He owns and breeds racehorses trained by Tom Dascombe, and bred Brown Panther, which won a major race at Royal Ascot in 2011 and then the 2015 Dubai Gold Cup.

  Owen met his wife Louise Bonsall at primary school in 1984. The couple bought Lower Soughton Manor near Mold in Flintshire, where they keep his cars and her horses. They were engaged on the 14th of February 2004 and married on the 24th of June 2005 at the Carden Park Hotel in Chester. Their four children are Gemma Rose, born on the 1st of May 2003; James Michael, born on the 6th of February 2006; Emily May, born on the 29th of October 2007; and Jessica, born on the 26th of February 2010.

  In January 2024, Owen revealed that his son James had been diagnosed with Stargardt disease, a degenerative eye condition, when he was eight years old. Owen himself had a helicopter, an Eurocopter Dauphin, installed at his home with a helipad, and had been training to fly. Newcastle United eventually banned him from that training on the grounds of excessive insurance premiums, a postscript that fits a career defined by the collision between ambition and the cost of being insured.