Michael Owen: Difference between revisions

Michael Owen

Personal information
Full name	Michael James Owen
Height	5'8 (173cm)
Position(s)	Forward
Team information
Current team	Newcastle United
‡ National team caps and goals, correct as of 1 May 2006

Michael James Owen (born December 14, 1979 in Chester, Cheshire) is an English football player, currently playing for Newcastle United. He has also played for Liverpool and Real Madrid. He plays as a striker, and is noted particularly for his speed, acceleration and clinical finishing. He has enjoyed a hugely successful and high-profile career at both club and international level and was the European Footballer of the Year in 2001.

Career

Michael Owen was born to Janette and Terry Owen in the Countess of Chester Hospital, Cheshire. He has 2 older brothers Andrew and Terry Junior, an older sister Karen and a younger sister Lesley.

Michael's Dad Terry had previously played for Everton F.C., and he can always remember kicking a football with his father and brothers. As an Everton fan, he insisted that he was Gary Lineker when ever the family had a game.

When aged 7, Terry persuaded the manager of Mold Alexandra to let Michael into his team of 10year old's. Michael was quite a bit younger than most, and very much smaller, but he was soon showing off his "flair" and started in most games. He also played for his primary school team in Hawarden, Wales, breaking all local scoring records in his first season.

From the age of 14 he attended the FA's School of Excellence in Staffordshire but also continued to study at the local Hawarden High School and picked up ten GCSEs.

Liverpool F.C.

Liverpool signed Owen as an apprentice while in his teens, although as a boy he had been a supporter of their local arch-rivals Everton. With Owen's help, Liverpool's youth team won the FA Youth Cup in 1996. He signed professional forms for the senior team just after his seventeenth birthday in December 1996, making a sensational debut for the team against Wimbledon in May 1997, coming on as a substitute and scoring a goal. With an injury to Robbie Fowler, he was thrust immediately into action as a first team regular alongside the likes of newcomer Paul Ince and playmaker Steve McManaman in the following 1997-98 season. Owen ended that season as joint top scorer in the Premier League, scoring eighteen goals (equal with Chris Sutton and Dion Dublin), as well as being voted the PFA Young Player of the Year by his fellow professionals.

In the 1998 World Cup Michael Owen was the star for England as he became a well known player. His goal against Argentina stunned the world.

He continued to be a consistent goalscorer for Liverpool, and in 2001 helped the club to their most successful season for several years. The team won the League Cup, FA Cup and UEFA Cup, with Owen scoring two goals in the last few minutes against Arsenal in the FA Cup final to turn what appeared to be a 1-0 defeat into a 2-1 victory. Surprisingly, however, he failed to score in the team's incredible 5-4 victory against Deportivo Alavés in the UEFA Cup Final, and was substituted in that game. At the end of the year, he became the first British player for twenty years to win the European Footballer of the Year award.

Due to Liverpool's continued failure to win the Premier League or the Champions League, and his own stated ambition to some day play abroad, Owen was often linked with moves to other clubs. In the summer of 2004, a combination of:

• Stalled contract talks
• A new manager in Rafael Benitez
• The income generation to all parties of a transfer
• The highly lucrative and lower tax wages on offer to Owen
• Only one year remaining on his contract before he could leave Liverpool on a free transfer
• The memories of Liverpool losing Steve McManaman in a similar no-fee' manner previously

Resultantly and reluctantly, Liverpool sold Owen to Real Madrid, for a fee of €12 million on 13 August 2004, with midfielder Antonio Nunez moving in the other direction as a make-weight. This move turned out to be somewhat ironic, as in the following season Liverpool won the Champions League, while Real won nothing for the second successive season.

F.C. Real Madrid

Owen had a slow start to his Madrid career and drew some criticism from fans and the Spanish press for his lack of form, often being confined to the substitutes bench during matches. However, a successful return to action with the England team in October 2004 seemed to revive his morale, and on his first match back with Madrid following this he scored his first goal for the team, the winner in a 1-0 UEFA Champions League group game victory over Dynamo Kiev. He quickly followed this up just a few days later with his first Spanish league goal for the team in a 1-0 victory over Valencia, and also hit the target in the three of the next four games to make it 5 goals in 7 successive matches. He ended the season with a highly respectable 13 goals in La Liga (the season's highest ratio of goals scored to number of minutes played), as Real finished runners-up in the Spanish championship. In August 2005 speculation arose that Owen would soon part company with Real Madrid in order to join one of the English Premier League's more dominant teams and also to secure his position as England's first choice striker, following Real's signing of two high-profile Brazilian forwards .

On August 24 2005, Newcastle United announced that they had agreed a club record fee of £17 million with Madrid for Owen, although they still had to negotiate with the player's advisers. [1]. However, Owen claimed that he would only be willing to spend a year on loan to them. This came just a day after Everton, traditional rivals of Owen's beloved Liverpool, had a bid for the player turned down by the Spanish club [2].

Newcastle United F.C.

On August 31 2005 Owen finally signed a four-year contract to play for Newcastle United, despite initial press speculation that he would rather have returned to Liverpool. [3] Roughly 20,000 fans were present at Newcastle's home ground of St James' Park for Owen's official unveiling as a Newcastle player. [4] He scored his first goal for the club on his second appearance, the middle goal in a 3-0 away win at Blackburn Rovers on September 18 – Newcastle's first win of the season. Owen scored his first hat-trick for Newcastle in the 4-2away win over West Ham United on December 17. It was also a 'perfect hat trick', (meaning he scored with his left foot, right foot, and head).

On December 31, 2005, Owen broke a metatarsal bone in his foot in a match against Tottenham Hotspur. He underwent a successful surgery to place a pin in the bone, to help speed the healing process. On March 24 he underwent a second, minor, operation. He was considered unlikely to play more than one competitive match before the FIFA World Cup 2006, but made a surprisingly early return to the Newcastle first team squad, when announced before the following day's match against West Bromwich Albion on Friday 21st April 2006. [5] He did not, however, play in the match, his return to action took place against Birmingham City on April 29 he came off the substitutes bench on the 62nd minute for Michael Chopra.

Clubs

• Liverpool (1996-2004)
• Real Madrid (2004-2005)
• Newcastle United (2005-present)

International career

Owen had a highly successful record at Youth and Under-21 international level, although he was only briefly a member of the England Under-21 team before he made his debut for the senior team in a friendly match against Chile in February 1998. Playing in this game made Owen the youngest player to represent England in the whole of the 20th century.

Owen's youthful enthusiasm, pace and talent made him a popular player across the country, and many fans were keen for him to be made a regular player for the team ahead of that year's World Cup. His first goal for England, against Morocco in another friendly game just prior to this tournament, only increased these calls. The goal also made him the youngest ever player to have scored for England, until his record was surpassed by Wayne Rooney in 2003.

Although he was selected for the World Cup squad by manager Glenn Hoddle, he was kept on the bench as a substitute in the first two games. However, his substitute appearance in the second game against Romania saw him score a goal and hit the post with another shot, almost salvaging the defeat. After that, Hoddle had little choice but to play him from the start, and in England's second round match against Argentina he scored a sensational individual goal, voted by many as the goal of the tournament and really bringing him to the attention of the world football scene.

England lost that match and went out of the tournament, but Owen had sealed his place as an automatic England choice and his popularity in the country was huge. At the end of the year he won a public vote to be elected winner of the prestigious BBC Sports Personality of the Year title, the award's youngest ever recipient.

He has since played for England in Euro 2000 and Euro 2004, and the 2002 World Cup, scoring goals in all three tournaments. This makes him the only player to ever have scored in four major tournaments for England. He even scored a hat-trick against Germany in the 2001 qualifying campaign for the 2002 World Cup, the first English player to score a hat-trick against Germany since Geoff Hurst, who scored his hat trick in the 1966 World Cup Final. He subsequently scored a second hat-trick against Colombia in New Jersey in May 2005.

In April 2002, he was named as England's captain for a friendly match against Paraguay in place of the injured regular captain David Beckham. Owen was the youngest England skipper since Bobby Moore in 1963, and since then has regularly captained England during any absence for Beckham.

As of November 2005, Owen has been capped seventy-five times for England and scored thirty-five goals: he is fourth in the list of all-time top scorers for the England team, behind Bobby Charlton (49 goals), Gary Lineker (48) and Jimmy Greaves (44). He and Lineker jointly hold the record of twenty-two goals for England in competitive matches, i.e. World Cup and European Championship games and the qualifiers for those tournaments.

In November 2005, Owen was the hero in a thrilling friendly against Argentina in which England were trailing 2-1, until Owen scored two late goals in the 89th minute and late on in injury time to give England a 3-2 win over the Argentinians.

Private life

Owen married his girlfriend Louise Bonsall in June 2005, two years after the birth of their daughter Gemma Rose (born 1 May 2003). Their son, James Michael Owen, was born on 6 February 2006. Michael and Louise had been engaged since Valentine's Day 2004, and had known each other since starting primary school in 1984.

The couple had initially planned to get married at their home, Lower Soughton Hall (near Northop and Soughton), but changed plans when they were informed that if a licence was granted for a marriage ceremony the venue must be made available for other weddings for three years. In early 2006 Owen was reported to be training for a helicopter pilot's licence, to enable him to fly his own aircraft.

Gambling

Owen, an admitted lover of Horse Racing with regular attendence at Chester Racecourse, also has a reported love of gambling [6]. He has admitted that his father Terry has opened offshore gambling accounts, which Owen has used. At World Cup 2002, and Euro 2004, reports circulated of a gambling circle, with Owen, John Terry, Frank Lampard and Rio Ferdinand at it's centre. Owen and his club manager/s have dismissed the claims and said he has nothing to be ashamed of.

In April 2006, it was reported that Owen and England strike partner Wayne Rooney had a rift over Rooney's alleged £700,000 gambling debts with one of Owen's business partners, Stephen Smith [7]. Smith ran GoldChip, a betting service for top players. Rooney, who racked up the debts on horse racing, football and greyhounds in just five months, quickly resolved the debt with his advisers. The rift was publicly denied.

Statistics

Career Honours

Liverpool F.C.

Winner

• 2000/01 League Cup
• 2000/01 FA Cup
• 2000/01 UEFA Cup
• 2001/02 European Super Cup
• 2001/02 Charity Shield
• 2002/03 League Cup

Runner Up

• 2001/02 FA Premier League (Level 1)
• 2002/03 Charity Shield

Real Madrid

Runner Up

• 2004/05 Spanish Primera División

Individual Honours

• 1998 PFA Young Player of the Year
• 1998 Premier League Joint Topscorer, 18 Goals
• 1999 Premier League Joint Topscorer, 18 Goals
• 2001 European Footballer of the Year

External links

• Official website for Michael Owen
• TheFA.com profile