There are few footballers less fashionable than Michael Owen.
Once a renowned and prolific European goalscorer, Owen is now associated with redundant punditry, Partridge calibre advertising and the taint of England’s Golden Generation.
He was also the player that made me fall in love with the sport.
A nostalgic and personal connection isn’t reason enough to pen words on a sports star who retired 8 years ago to minimal fanfare, languishing in the bowels of a relegation threatened Stoke squad — but it is definitively something. Coupled with his 2019 autobiography Reboot and a 2020 appearance on Jamie Carragher’s excellent Greatest Game podcast, Owen has been on my mind. His association with multiple clubs, all of whom regard the striker with anything ranging from disgust to apathy, makes him an interesting subject in and of itself, but when juxtaposed with his former illustrious reputation (we’re talking 1998–2005), it renders the fella positively fascinating. Somehow he straggles the paradoxical line of being both overrated and underrated. ‘Mo’ was prolific without ever scoring more than 28 goals in a season (impressive, but pallid compared to the respective tallies of peers like Thierry Henry and Alan Shearer) and hyper valuable to a defensive generation at Liverpool (Gary Neville disdainfully commented that the team used to play from the Kop). Like I said, I’ve been thinking about Owen a lot, and figured what better way to work out that newfound obsession than through the magic of a sprawling and unfocused essay.
‘Form is temporary, class is permanent’ is a phrase I remember often being attributed to latter-day Owen. Going back to ITV’s The Premiership and the subsequent mid-noughties revival of BBC’s Match of the Day, the striker’s goal droughts and subsequent emphatic form were a subject of regular discussion. Owen was the sort of forward who’d go 7 games without a goal, then bang in 10 across the next 7. But if we travel back to the inception point of his stardom, the World Cup of 1998, it’s obvious why the then 18 year-old enthralled a nation — and consistency was only one variable. Netting a solo wonder-goal in a world cup classic (England were bested 3–2 in a match that featured a sending off, two penalties and of course Owen’s now famous contribution), is one thing, but tormenting and striking fear into the hearts of a sturdy Argentinian defence is another. Owen unleashed a blitz of pace and savvy across the 90, before cooly dispatching his penalty in an ultimately fruitless shoot-out. He was a teenager at the time, and he belonged to Liverpool. The former explains his ascension to instant fame, the latter is personally more important.
I’m a Liverpool fan, and give or take a few seasons (2007–2009) have followed them with a relentlessness that surpasses mere affection. I elected to support them around 1998 purely on the basis of my ability to spell the team’s title, but by 2001, at nine years of age, I was hooked. It just so happens this was the Michael Owen era. Taking the baton lost by a dimming Robbie Fowler, and later grasped by the superior Steven Gerrard; Owen was the team’s premier star from 1998–2004. He was also building a stellar international career, a hot favourite to take Bobby Charlton’s goal-scoring record (he would ultimately fall 10 goals short, and be eclipsed by Wayne Rooney as the country’s emblem of youthful promise). I’m no England fan, and certainly as the years have progressed that disdain has festered, but at the time there was a seductive quality that rendered them tolerable, at least in the arena of soccer. Michael Owen had a large part to do with that.
His Liverpool tenure was the high-point of Owen’ career, purposeful right until his departure in 2004. Between 1997 and 2004 he netted some 158 goals for the club (averaging 20 goals a season — including some ravaged by injury), stats that actually better his talismanic predecessor Robbie Fowler (who averaged 15 across a more expansive period of time, despite scoring more). Playing largely under the late Gérard Houllier, Owen amassed four major honours and crucially, won the Ballon D’or in 2001. It’s interesting to review Owen’s time at Liverpool, and ultimately despite the steady numbers and personal accolades, it’s possible to reach the conclusion he was a touch overrated. Take the Ballon for instance. In that season he bested Thierry Henry and Raul for the trophy, Owen netting 30 goals for club and country across 12 months.In the same period Henry managed 27, but Raul a mighty 37. On statistics alone, there’s a clear winner, but delve a little deeper and the plot thickens. In that time Owen scored his now historic hat-trick against Germany and netted two late goals in an otherwise one-sided FA Cup final against Henry’s Arsenal (a game where the frenchman was famously profligate). That’s what Owen supplied at Liverpool, an ability to rise on the big occasion. There are other examples, a dominant and crafty performance in the 2001 UEFA Cup semi against Roma (also a cup Liverpool would win), killing Manchester United off in the 2003 Worthington Cup Final ( Liverpool were largely outmatched across the 90) and the fact he never failed to score in a competitive knockout game for England. To underpin that weight of that last point, Wayne Rooney, largely regarded as a more versatile and prolific player (although his goal per game ratio is incidentally lesser than Owen’s) NEVER scored in an intnl knock-out fixture.
The Owen debate has its detractors. Some will decry Raul’s loss in the 2001 Ballon as a case of English media ladling syrupy heaps of hyperbole on one of their own, other will focus on the fact Owen never actually scored 20 premier league goals in a single season (he hit 18 and 19 multiple times — possibly the best striker never to notch the fabled 20), whilst yet more might note him as a goal-hanger, an expert poacher with no other facets to his game. The last is a particularly odd point, but not wholly inaccurate. By 2002, Owen had definitely recalibrated his JD to become a fox in the box, but prior to that he was unpacking defences on the regular, his pace and clinical touch leading to two Golden Boots before the age of 20, and becoming the youngest player to strike 100 premier league goals in 2003 (at age 23). The reason for this evolution? A hamstring injury in the middle of the 1999–2000 season, a moment almost as pivotal to the Owen narrative as any goal. Playing Leeds at Elland Road, the young striker (19 at this juncture), went down with a snapped hamstring, an injury that was at the time irreparable. Now, thanks to advances in sports science, such a niggle would be a 6 month inconvenience, but for a late 20th Century Owen it was an early death rattle. Of course good things would follow, but his legendary pace was diminished, the hamstring left to reattach itself elsewhere on his body. As a result, with more injuries inbound, Owen saw his role in the Liverpool and England outfit changed from imposing sprinter to ambush predator. It was the beginning of the end.
So was Michael Owen overrated at Liverpool? Probably not, but there’s a credible argument for those inclined to make it. His time at the club brought myriad narratives, adaptations and landmarks. It’s on the reader to determine if he’s worthy. Form can be temporary, but it’s also damn important.
Yet…
For the rest of his professional life, Owen was perhaps underrated. His international form never let up (before being nixed by Capello in 2008), and periods at Real Madrid, Newcastle and Manchester United brought their own points of interest. Newcastle is regarded as the nadir of his career, four years on tyneside that resulted in relegation and just 31 goals. Again, one has to dig to really understand the nature of his performance in this era. He was plagued by injury, resulting in a paltry 79 appearances, but when this variable is taken into account, that 31 starts to look less feeble. The days of being a dependable 1 in 2 man may have ended, but that’s not a poor strike rate, especially when coupled with the fact the team around him degraded season on season. He is of course despised by Newcastle fans, but that’s more to do with his lofty £16m price-tag (probably between £30-£40m in today’s market), lack of match fitness and apparent disinterest in the city’s culture. His performances, when available, were more than adequate. Certainly the Newcastle team of 2021 would kill for a striker of Owen’s ruthlessness.
At Madrid and Manchester United (at least his first season), things were even better. He boasted the best goals scored per minutes played in La Liga during his single season with Los Blancos (16 goals from 22 starts), and his opening foray at United - more as a marquee substitute - saw him net a crucial goal in a cup final, a Champions League hat-trick and of course that strike against Manchester City. His United career petered out after the first year, but there’s no denying he made a minor, yet indelible mark at the club. At each of these outfits Owen was regarded as a flop, and yet, the stats and second level analysis tell a different story. He was a natural goalscorer, with a knack for finding form in big games. You might say, underrated.
On Owen’s perceived failure at Real Madrid, Guillem Balague wrote:
“He was never treated as one of Real Madrid’s Galacticos. That means he was never guaranteed his place and was always treated differently by the press. Real Madrid have made a big mistake with letting him go”
Which takes us to one final thought…
It is possible deduce that Owen’s mixed legacy has more to do with the man than the footballer. His media career, whilst improving, has often been a source of light-hearted derision, and the schoolboy virtue with which he conducted himself in his playing days never conjured much personal affection or spectacle. Compared to the roguish braggadocio of a Fowler or the steadfast one-club loyalty displayed by Steven Gerrard, it’s not tough to deduce why Liverpool fans have no interest in celebrating Owen. Of course there’s the fact he parlayed a move for relative peanuts to Real Madrid, and the terminal choice to sign for United in 2009. Even then, these feel secondary. A player of Owen’s calibre should be loved somewhere — yet none of his five clubs would deign to claim him as their own. It’s a strange, melancholic epilogue in a book that started with raucous excitement on a summer’s eve in 1998. That’s fashion for you, it changes and mutates in strange ways.
But then, doesn’t everything come back into vogue?
