IT IS THE end of autumn and Michael Owen pulls tightly on his Canada Goose puffa jacket as he prepares to be photographed in front of his stables on the English side of the border, where Cheshire blurs into Wales. He requires no direction thereafter, a smile emerging as the camera begins to click. At thirty-five, he still possesses the youthful appearance of the boy next door.
An interview like this probably would not have been possible in 2001, when Owen was crowned European footballer of the year, winning the Ballon d’Or because his twenty-four goals for Liverpool that season contributed significantly towards a cup treble under Gérard Houllier’s management. These were achievements that seemed to set him on a natural path towards legendary Anfield status. By then the 21-year-old was also one of England’s most important players, having already played and scored in a World Cup and a European Championship.
‘I’d receive sack loads of fan mail every single morning,’ Owen remembers of the period where his working day was micro-managed between football bosses, coaches, agents and their assistants. ‘The sacks would arrive at Melwood, my parents’ house and my house as well. Some of the people would be really determined – they’d send the same letter to all three addresses. My mum, Jeanette, told me, because she went through them. She did at the beginning, anyway. After a while, it would have been impossible to keep up – a full-time job for anyone.
‘It felt normal to me at the time, scoring goals for Liverpool and England in important games. It was the normal thing for me to do because I’d done it all my life. Being recognized was an extension of that. It was fine. My agent, Tony Stephens, dealt with all kinds of requests. You really wouldn’t believe some of the proposals.
‘It’s certainly a lot quieter than it was back then,’ Owen concedes. ‘The fan mail hasn’t stopped completely but most of it comes from the Far East. Not from England.’
Owen is a household name because he was a superstar of his profession. Owen was a cleansing antidote to the brash Spice Boy era at Liverpool, the pin-up boy of a new generation of footballer. With David Beckham, he became the first living person outside of the British royal family to feature on a postage stamp.
Owen justified his reputation by performance, rattling in 158 goals in 297 games for Liverpool: an average of more than one in two. His presence helped determine the outcome of league games, cup finals and entire campaigns and, to an extent, managerial reigns.
And yet, for many, Owen’s name is not as revered as it might be. He realizes the decision to sign for Real Madrid in 2004, which meant he missed out on Liverpool’s Champions League success a year later, as well as other subsequent career choices, determined how he is now remembered. Though he insists – and later explains at length – that the true account of his story is not quite what many imagine it to be: ‘Because it never is in the mad world of football, especially the higher you go and when so many different people are involved.’
Owen was well on his way towards becoming a Liverpool great at the point of his departure. He chose to leave for Madrid mainly because of curiosity, with an intention to return to Anfield within a year. And yet he ended up coming back to play for Newcastle United before signing for Manchester United, Liverpool’s greatest rivals. The decision was viewed on Merseyside as the ultimate betrayal.
I ask Owen whether he still recognizes the teenager that shot to prominence in a Liverpool shirt – when he looks in the mirror, what does he see?
‘I’ve changed,’ he says. ‘Life makes you change. There are a few extra lines on my forehead for a start.
‘You enter football as a closed book. You’re naive. Naivety is sometimes a good quality, because it makes you fearless. You don’t give a damn who you are playing. You just get at them without considering the consequences. As you get older, you think more. You worry more. You begin to agonize. You begin to appreciate what you have, what you’ve lost.’
Owen has all of this now: the magnificent Manor House Stables in the middle of nowhere, amongst the trees, the wide open fields, the horses, the sheep, the weathered cottages and the muddy lanes. The road signs in Malpas say we are thirty-one miles away from Liverpool. But it seems much further while out in the countryside where farms specializing in beef, pork, lamb, eggs and honey are the main source of trade, and the pungency of dung and fertilizer hangs in the air.
Owen splits his time between here, breeding horses; Hawarden, where he grew up and still lives; the television studio, where he works as a match analyser for BT; and an office, where he runs Michael Owen Management Limited, a player management company he shares with adviser and friend Simon Marsh, whom he met working for one of his old sponsors, Umbro.
‘The general perception of footballers is bad and it annoys me,’ Owen says, beginning to explain why he entered the agency business. ‘Footballers need help, because not many people are born to be a role model, yet because of the media glare and the instant wealth, the public’s expectations shift immediately. Fame is thrust upon them. It was thrust upon me, certainly. Footballers have to learn fast, probably faster than young people in any other industry. Social media is an absolute minefield. You cannot prepare someone for becoming a millionaire overnight. My message is always the same: focus on the game and improve. The money will come.’
It’s certainly true that plenty of people have preconceptions about Owen. Venal, taciturn, disconnected and robotic are recurring descriptions from those who have viewed him from afar, those who have resisted warming to his clinically matter-of-fact public persona. Meet others who have worked with him, and those who know Owen socially – like Jamie Carragher – and you would not believe they are speaking about the same individual.
It was Owen, of course, who raced into the limelight before Carragher and Steven Gerrard: a trio who emerged from Liverpool’s centre of excellence under Steve Heighway. Heighway’s greatest gift, perhaps, was not to be afraid to tell young players how great they could be. While Gerrard was troubled by self-doubt and Carragher’s inner qualities became more obvious as time progressed, Owen did not need much reassurance.
Confidence was a continuous companion and yet it is not very British at all to display such a quality in public, never mind talk about it. Any sportsman who attempts to describe their self-belief risks being accused of arrogance. But scoring goals was a ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ act for Owen in the same way breathing or sex is to others. Yet Owen does not sentimentalize his ability and rarely resorts to embellishment when it comes to discussing his best moments.
‘Because footballers have answers on the pitch, we are expected to have answers off it as well and that’s unfair,’ he says. ‘I would have been mortified if anyone thought I was big-headed, because around friends and family I’m not at all. But as soon as I crossed the line, I felt like I was performing on the stage, where I belonged. I could rationalize everything that was happening and that’s probably why I did so well as a teenager.
‘You almost have to live two lives – believing you are superman on the pitch but realizing you can’t behave like that off it.
‘Because you are a good footballer, everyone expects you to be a role model, everyone expects you to interview well when a camera is shoved in front of your face, everyone expects you to walk on to a stage and speak confidently in front of five hundred people you don’t know, even though you are young and still aren’t really confident enough to look people in the eye all of the time.
‘Everyone expects all of these things just because you can kick a ball in a goal, even though all you’ve known all your life is how to play football really well. If you can’t talk, lots of people say, “He’s a typical thick footballer; he’s this, he’s that.” It’s a really sad world in that respect; it’s pretty harsh. If you even talk about this, the money angle is thrown back at you – as if money somehow solves everyone’s problems and makes them superior.
‘I learned quickly that I was being myself on the pitch, displaying confidence. Off the pitch, I wasn’t so confident; I was quite shy. So I had to develop a confidence that maybe wasn’t natural. I had to be different to who I actually was. That doesn’t mean I was being disingenuous. What it means is, my progression as a human being was unnatural by the standards of others. I had to come across well all of the time and behave properly. I certainly wasn’t a bad lad, because my parents brought me up well. But I wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t a saint. No footballer is. No person is. We all make mistakes. And I’ve made many, some big ’uns. I’m sure we’ll talk about them.’
When Owen says ‘I was born to score goals’, he is probably telling the truth. His father, Terry, grew up on the tough Rimrose Valley estate in Thornton near Crosby, seven miles to the north of Liverpool’s city centre, and a career at Everton beckoned until Harry Catterick, the legendary manager, decided to release him in 1970 after only two first-team appearances. A nomadic existence as a lower-league centre-forward followed, with professional spells at Bradford City, Chester City, Cambridge United, Rochdale and Port Vale. Son can remember watching father later play for clubs like Oswestry, Colwyn Bay, Caernarfon and Prestatyn, at ancient grounds where ‘the smell of Bovril wafted across the pitch and Deep Heat liniment came from the changing rooms’.
For Terry, playing football became a necessity because it provided financial support for the family, which included five children.
‘People tend to assume that my dad was one of those dads who makes his kids watch endless tapes of his career but that wasn’t the case in our family,’ Owen says. ‘Playing football and scoring goals was just something he did. He never made a point of sitting us all down and telling stories about his career. There were a few old photos lying about the house but many of them were buried away in a cardboard box in the attic. I’ve got to be honest, I don’t even know what type of striker my dad was. He played. He scored. He came home. He didn’t boast about anything. He was very modest.’
Terry Owen’s happiest times were at Chester, a detail that explains why the Owen family settled near the town, although football had not created a nest egg. After retiring, Terry and Jeanette ran a clothes shop in Crosby and when that failed, Jeanette worked for the frozen-food company Iceland, in Deeside, while Terry sold policies for Co-op Insurance. He dreaded knocking on doors because of his reserved nature.
Michael was small but grew strong thanks to Terry’s subtle guidance. Every Thursday night, steak would be served at the Owen household before weekends where Terry would stand behind whichever goal Michael was attacking, though saying little.
‘He wasn’t a man of many words, my dad, but I knew he was proud of me just because he was there watching all of the time.’
Michael was the youngest brother of the family by nine years and while the other two (Terry and Andrew) got jobs working for British Aerospace in nearby Broughton, Michael sensed his destiny lay in football.
‘I know loads of footballers say the same thing but with me I honestly believed it. It sounds conceited to say I knew I was good but it didn’t go to my head and that’s probably why I made it.’
Owen’s potential was noted at Hawarden Rangers, when he scored ‘about 116 goals’ in forty games as a twelve year old before deciding to walk out on the club because they did not make him their player of the year, demonstrating the kind of self-assurance that would later propel him to more remarkable feats and perhaps even to Manchester United despite his Liverpool links.
‘I joined another team called St David’s and although I was training with Liverpool by then, I made sure I was available to play when the game with Hawarden Rangers came around because I was desperate to prove to them what they were missing,’ he admits. ‘We won 4–3 and I scored all four goals. I felt a bit smug, I guess.’
The desire to constantly prove himself was clear but Owen believes his passion for football was augmented mostly by playing with his dad and brothers in the park rather than by the coaching he received later.
‘I just saw it as fun; there was nothing academic about it. I barely kicked the ball with my left foot until I was sixteen but because I was so fast I could chase on to a through pass and have loads of time to select where I was going to place my shot.’
Richard Dunne, the stocky Everton centre-back from Dublin, was the first opponent in youth football that made Owen realize he really needed to toughen up physically and so he joined the Deeside Boxing Club above a pub in Shotton, taking part in two proper fights, in Anglesey one evening (after he’d played a schoolboys’ match earlier in the day) and then the Civic Centre in Connah’s Quay, winning twice on split decisions.
‘I was becoming quite popular at school because of my football ability but sometimes with popularity you get a lot of jealousy as well. I wouldn’t say that boxing made me a more intimidating presence or anything like that, but mentally it helped me look after myself. It taught me that if you get knocked down, you bounce back up straight away.’
Owen supported Everton because of his father’s links with the club and his favourite player was Gary Lineker. He contrasts his allegiance to that of Jamie Carragher, the Liverpool legend who grew up as an Evertonian.
‘Carra used to go to away games in Europe with his dad. He was a diehard. Listening to him when we both joined Liverpool, I realized that, actually, I wasn’t a proper Evertonian at all. Until we were fifteen or sixteen, Carra used to go into a really bad mood if Liverpool ever beat Everton; he was almost physically sick. We’d watch the derbies together and he’d get so nervous he’d leave the room and sit on the toilet. I wanted Everton to win but if they lost, it wouldn’t affect me like it did Carra. He was the biggest Evertonian I knew.’
Owen and Carragher’s relationship blossomed at Lilleshall, the Football Association’s school of excellence in Shropshire, which opened in 1984 but closed in 1999 when many Premier League clubs developed their own youth academies based on the same model. The old system meant young players could not sign professional contracts until they were sixteen and while Carragher had already made his mind up to sign for Liverpool ahead of Everton, Owen took his time deciding what to do because he had more options.
First, he went to Manchester United, where he was introduced to Alex Ferguson, the first-team manager. Ferguson had rated Owen so highly that he dispatched his assistant Brian Kidd to watch him whenever United didn’t have a game and Owen did. After that, he went to Arsenal and at Highbury they provided tickets in the Clock End for a match against Coventry City and taking Owen into the dressing room before the game, where Ian Wright – the club’s all-time leading goalscorer at that time – made a fuss of him. From there, he visited Chelsea, where Glenn Hoddle revealed a chart in his office.
‘It was a bit surreal because only a few years later Glenn was taking me to the World Cup as England manager, but here he said, “There are a lot of youngsters we want to sign but, look, your name is at the top of the list.”’
Owen trained at Everton, where he did not get to meet Joe Royle, then Oldham Athletic, Norwich City, Chester and Wrexham too. With Manchester City, he went to France for a tournament. Yet it was at Liverpool that he felt most confident.
‘I decided on Liverpool because of the individuals in charge,’ Owen explains. ‘Steve Heighway, Hughie McAuley and Dave Shannon were the three youth coaches I’d worked most with and I liked them all. Steve was a particularly big influence. We shared a close bond and my parents liked him too. He was dead straight with all the parents and never led anyone up the garden path, making promises that he couldn’t keep.
‘I never felt nervous at Liverpool. I felt like I belonged there. I knew all of the lads too. I’d been away at Lilleshall for a couple of years and I really didn’t want to live away from home again. Liverpool were really keen to put me in digs, so I’d be closer to Melwood. But in the end they agreed I could commute from home. I sensed that Liverpool trusted me. And I trusted them. That clinched it.’
Owen’s first contract was worth £500 a week plus bonuses. The interest in him was reflected by the commercial deals he signed within a few years of becoming a first-team footballer. First there was Umbro. Then came Tissot, Jaguar, Walkers (who released a ‘Cheese and Owen’ branded crisp), Lucozade Sport, Yamaha, Persil and Asda.
Although he scored on his Liverpool debut as a seventeen year old, it was his achievements with England that propelled him farthest initially. An entire chapter of his 2004 autobiography was devoted to the ‘Wonder Goal’ against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup. The manner of the moment represented the bold nature of the person who delivered it.
‘When you grow up, your desire to become a footballer isn’t related to being famous or having a Ferrari. You just want to be the best. I think that’s the case for most motivated people, whatever industry you work in. Yet what comes with it when you’re a footballer, there’s nothing you can do to prepare for it. You can only prepare to make yourself a better football player: by looking at how early you go to bed, what you eat or how you practise.
‘I made my debut for Liverpool [against Wimbledon in 1997] and scored. Straight away, people were talking about me. Within twelve months, I’d become a regular in the Liverpool team, made my debut for England and scored in the World Cup against Argentina, making me well known around the world. That change was a lot to take in – really sudden. If I hadn’t had good people around me – a good agent, my family, players I looked up to like Alan Shearer, Dwight Yorke and David Beckham – all of them helping me, taking the pressure away, it would have been easy to lose track of where I was going.
‘The trajectory obviously wasn’t normal by everyone else’s standards but it felt normal to me. I would score goals for Liverpool; I would score goals for England; I’d do well at the World Cup. It wasn’t a case of: let’s see how I do here. I’d done it all my life – I’d broken records for every team I’d played for. In my mind, it was always going to happen. It might sound arrogant saying it, but if you don’t think like that, you won’t go anywhere near as far. The way I thought was probably very, very rare.
‘When you’re young, you don’t think anything is impossible. I could probably name [Gabriel] Batistuta of the players in the Argentina team, none of the others. I wasn’t worried. But towards the end of my career, I would think about the opponents I would face. I’d know I was in for a game against Rio Ferdinand or John Terry. I’d maybe target the other centre-half, maybe play on him instead because he wasn’t as quick or as strong. You lose that air of fearlessness.
‘When I was eighteen, I feared nothing. I just did it. It didn’t matter who I was playing against. I had an unshakable self-belief. Nothing bothered me. The prospect of scoring against Argentina at the World Cup? It felt natural.’
Owen’s rise happened at a time when football was changing. Matches were soap operas and the players became celebrities. Owen hired Tony Stephens as his agent, who worked for SFX, the New York-based sports management agency that also controlled the affairs of David Beckham and basketball legend Michael Jordan. For Beckham, Stephens had negotiated sponsorship deals worth £17 million a year, including a £4 million-a-year deal with Adidas.
‘Football went boom and David was the first superstar in terms of popularity. He led the way and I followed. I’m naturally shy and I didn’t want to go down the route of being in the front pages of the papers all of the time. That in some way contributed towards my image of being clean-cut.
‘I have loads of respect for Tony [Stephens]. He helped create a certain image for me. It wasn’t necessarily different to how I was or am now but, if I’m being honest, I suppose it wasn’t absolutely a reflection of me.
‘When I meet new people, one of the most common things they say to me is, “You’re nothing like I thought.” We spend five minutes together and they say, “I thought you were quite straight, boring and whatever.”
‘The lads at Liverpool will probably tell you that even when I was nineteen or twenty, inside the dressing room me and Carra were two of the loudest voices – screaming, laughing and instigating pranks. To the outside world, everyone looking in was thinking I was this whiter-than-white angel. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t going out night after night on the lash. But I like a drink and I’ve been known to enjoy a bet. Some of the values that people associate me with are true but it was dressed up more than the reality.’
Elsewhere in this book, Jamie Carragher says that the football ability that he and Owen shared was aggression – in spite of Owen’s widely held reputation as a clean player. Owen reasons this is partly natural but also a by-product of the youth system at Liverpool.
‘It was a far cry from what it is now, where everything is done for you,’ Owen says. ‘It was a tough environment. Everybody wanted it really badly. The standard was really high and the local lads set that standard. You were in touching distance of the first team – you could see the senior players walking into Melwood; you could see them prepare. You could see them train. Every now and then you’d get to have a kickabout with them. It was all very real.
‘Inside the youth teams, there would be fights. Every day was life or death – a quest for survival. You had to win your five-a-side. I’ve stuck my hand through the bedroom door in my mum and dad’s house four or five times when I’ve got home just because I’ve lost a five-a-side in training or been annoyed at someone for losing us a proper game. You look back and you think, What was I doing? I’m as calm as they come; I’ve got four kids; I’ve never raised a hand to anyone in my life – I’m not that way inclined at all. But losing in football made me act like a psychopath. When you’re in that situation and want something so badly, trying to scramble a way to the top, it can drive you mad.’
Owen recalls getting sent off against Manchester United during his first full season as a Liverpool player for a two-footed lunge at Peter Schmeichel, a goalkeeper almost twice his age and twice his size.
‘It was an example of the inner quirk inside me. On the face of it, I’m a nice lad. But put me on a football pitch facing Man United for Liverpool and I change.
‘In football, bravery represents going in for a tackle with a 6 ft 5 in. giant with a reputation for being sent off when you’re only 5 ft 8. But in my eyes, bravery in football is showing for the ball instead of hiding when you’re 1–0 down in front of seventy-five thousand people and most of the crowd are booing. There are different types of bravery. Aggression is the same. In my eyes, I was as aggressive as any player that’s ever bloody been. Certainly in the first few years of my career, I’d tackle anyone; I’d kick anyone. This goes back to youth level.
‘You look at the best players – they’re right on the edge. You see a Luis Suárez bite someone or a Wayne Rooney stamp. It isn’t an attempt to condone bad behaviour by explaining why it happens, because you’ve got to try to curb it, but I’ve always felt if you take that away from the best players, they’re not quite the same.
‘When you go on to the pitch, it has to be almost a life-or-death situation. We all feel like grabbing someone, pinching, kicking or even biting, especially when you want to win so much, whether it’s in five-a-side during training or during a game. The key is to find a way to stop yourself. If you’re not right on that edge – on the precipice of madness – you become normal.’
Many do not realize how injury accelerated Owen’s route towards normality. He was only nineteen when, in 1999 at Elland Road against Leeds United, he fell in agony, holding his hamstring – a vital instrument in his body considering his pace.
‘Players have surgery on muscles now but they didn’t then. So instead of having two sets of fully functioning hamstrings, I ran for the rest of my career on three [tendons] on one and two on the other. The string on my right leg ruptured before reattaching at the wrong place. It meant there was an imbalance in my body, one leg being considerably stronger than the other.
‘People are quick to say, “Oh, you weren’t as good when you left Liverpool.” But if you actually know what happened, you realize that it’s impossible for it to have turned out any other way. If you are running on one hamstring that isn’t as strong, there is going to be a natural gradual deterioration. You’ve got power in one leg while the other tries to keep up. That puts more pressure on your groin, your calf and your quads – so you end up pulling muscles elsewhere. And then hernias go. I ended up being prone to muscle injuries because I had one catastrophic injury at the start. It frustrates me because I never had any problems with my bones or ligaments. I didn’t realize it then, but the physical foundations of my entire career were built on sand.
‘Muscle injuries took their toll on me. You try to kid yourself at the beginning that everything is OK. But there was no doubt my physical ability was on the wane for a long time and my career was slowly being taken away from me. That probably coincided with the period where I stopped being on the absolute edge – when marriage and parenthood came along. Had my mind remained on the edge as my physical capacity declined, I probably would have gone crazy, knowing I couldn’t reach the levels I set myself: my brain telling me one thing but my body not being able to do it. It wouldn’t have been healthy. I probably came to some realization in the back of my mind that I wasn’t as good as I had been. I couldn’t sprint as fast as I needed or wanted to. I began to feel less invincible. I realized my powers were slipping.’
It seems remarkable that Owen managed to return to anywhere near the standards he set before 1999, never mind win the European Player of the Year award as he did two years later. That he did underlines what he believes was his strongest quality.
‘Mentality,’ he says. ‘When I was playing, I thought I was really quick and a very good finisher. I realized I had to brush up on dropping deep for the ball sometimes and not just going in behind the defence all of the time. I appreciated that to be a Liverpool player, I had to be able to link others into the game. I couldn’t just keep running and chasing after passes. There is no question, though, that my mentality was my greatest asset. There are loads of people who can run quickly; there are loads of people who can finish too. Most of us have a body that is robust and that can do similar things on a football pitch. But there’s one thing that separates the great players from the good players – it’s what lies between your ears. I had an unwavering dollop of self-belief.
‘I remember when Real Madrid came in for me and I spoke to Carra. He goes, “Mo, you’ll never play, will you? They’ve got Raúl, Ronaldo, [Fernando] Morientes and plenty of others.” I think he was taken aback by my confidence. I didn’t care. It was almost ignorance. I realized deep down they were great players: Ronaldo was the best in the world for a time and Raúl was the darling of Madrid. But the idea they were better than me never registered. I wasn’t bothered about them at all. The attitude was: I’m going there to knock them out of the team.
‘Maybe Carra was trying to put me off going. But I think we were big enough mates to have an honest conversation. Of course, I can admit now that other players were better than me. Then, while I was still active – in the first six or seven years – I wouldn’t have it that someone else was as good. It’s a horrible thing to say out loud because it comes across as egotistical, I realize that. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to think I was a big-headed so-and-so. But deep down that’s the way I was even in spite of the injuries. I wasn’t worried about anyone.’
The offer from Real Madrid arrived at a time of transition at Anfield. Houllier had left and been replaced by Rafael Benítez. Benítez was determined that he needed to break a British clique that he believed was present in the dressing room. Having already sold Danny Murphy to Charlton Athletic, Owen’s position was vulnerable because of his contract, which only had a year left to run.
Owen can understand fan frustration about the issue of Liverpool not receiving as much money as they should have for him but reasons that his agent had gone on a six-month sabbatical, deciding to travel the world, during Houllier’s last season in charge, thus delaying negotiations over a contract extension.
‘I didn’t envisage anyone making a bid for me and everyone agreed that we could wait until Tony [Stephens] returned,’ Owen explains. ‘It was different then to what it’s like now, where clubs are petrified to leave it so late. We were all really relaxed. I was happy; I was scoring goals. I had no reason to want to leave. When Real Madrid made the call, both Liverpool and I had a decision to make.
‘I must emphasize, I never dreamed of leaving Liverpool. I always thought that me, Carra and Stevie – we all came through at the same time – would be together until the end of our careers. I never asked for Real Madrid to come in for me and I never touted myself around through my agent. Some players do. I only wanted to play for Liverpool, to be there for ever.
‘When Madrid made an offer, my mind began to race. My instinct was to stay at Liverpool. But then I thought that maybe it was a chance to do what Ian Rush did – to go abroad for a year and then return. I wrestled with the decision. I spoke to Rick Parry [the chief executive] and said to him, “What if I just go and come back next summer?” I knew that if I retired having not tried it, I’d regret it. It was Real Madrid – the most successful club in Europe. They had the greatest players: Ronaldo, Raúl, Figo and Zidane.
‘I drove to John Lennon airport crying my eyes out, thinking, What the hell have you done? I was naive to think I could go there, come back home and pretend it never really happened, because once you make a break from the people and the club you trust, you lose a lot of control. The best-laid plans agreed between Rick Parry and me never came about.’
For Owen, the move to the Spanish capital was similar to Ian Rush’s experience in Turin with Juventus two decades earlier. Although on the pitch he was a greater success than Rush, scoring nineteen goals in forty-three starts, he admits he struggled when it was time to leave the training ground.
‘In my head, I had this idea of training sessions in the morning followed by afternoons sat in front of a swimming pool in the sun but I made the mistake of not buying somewhere in the first few months. I was married to Louise [Bonsall] by then with a two-year-old daughter. I spoke to Macca [Steve McManaman] before going out there and he loved it but he didn’t have kids.
‘The club put us in a businessmen’s hotel on the edge of the city for five months. Restaurants in Spain do not really open until 10 p.m. and we couldn’t have Gemma staying up until midnight every day at the age of two, so we’d put her to sleep at seven, turn the lights off half an hour later and put the only English TV channel on mute.
‘I felt guilty leaving Louise alone with Gemma if I ever went out to play golf with Ronaldo or César Sánchez, the back-up goalkeeper. I knew they’d be back in the hotel with little to do. Maybe the club could have done more to help. Certainly, I could have done more to prepare. We never had the support system around us to make it work.’
It was towards the end of his first season when Real Madrid’s president, Florentino Pérez, knocked on his hotel room door.
‘He said, “Michael, we’re happy for you to stay. But also, if you want to go back to the Premier League, we’re happy for you to go.” I said I agreed that I should go but only if it was to Liverpool. So discreet contact was made with Liverpool. The problem was, Newcastle weren’t shy in telling everyone they were in for me too, so it was splashed about the press and everyone knew about it.’
This was in the period when Liverpool won the Champions League in Istanbul.
‘Yeah, of course it made me envious,’ Owen admits. ‘Missing out on a night like that, who wouldn’t want to be a part of it? I was a motivated footballer and I cared deeply about Liverpool. I was delighted for lads like Carra, Stevie, Didi Hamann and Sami Hyypiä because they were my mates and I knew how much it meant to them. We’d been in the trenches together before. But it would be dishonest of me to say it didn’t make me jealous too. God, winning the European Cup with Liverpool – it would have been the greatest thing . . .’
Owen describes his desperation to return to Liverpool, a return ultimately made impossible by the financial package Newcastle offered to Real Madrid, a package delivered by chairman Freddie Shepherd, who was determined to show Newcastle’s frustrated supporters that he still possessed the financial clout to compete with the Premier League’s biggest clubs.
‘Pérez accepted Newcastle’s £16 million offer but I reminded him that I’d only leave for Liverpool. Pérez said, “Fine, get them to match the deal being offered by Newcastle then.” So my agent spoke to Rick Parry and I met with Rafa Benítez, who wanted me back. Rick said that he’d go to £10 million, considering they’d sold me for £8 million twelve months before. I told Rick that Real Madrid would never let me leave for that but maybe they might if he stretched it to £12 million. If everything worked out, I would be going back to Liverpool on less money than I was on before leaving. I was so desperate for it to happen that I told Rick I’d hold fire until the last possible moment in the transfer window and risk staying in Madrid. I knew that Pérez wanted to sign Sergio Ramos from Seville and he was waiting for the funds to come in to complete the deal.’
Owen says he broke down in tears when Parry called him to say Liverpool’s budget had been allocated to other areas of the squad and that he could only raise £10 million. It prompted Owen to make sure his agent brokered a deal with Newcastle where the contract stipulated that he could leave for Liverpool.
‘So I went to Newcastle for £16 million. Newcastle’s determination to get me and to pay such a big fee cost me my dream move. I don’t blame Newcastle at all, though. They wanted someone: they made an offer – fair enough.
‘Not many people know this but my contract at Newcastle said that if Liverpool made an offer of £12 million at the end of my first season, I could go back to Liverpool. It was £8 million at the end of the second year and £4 million at the end of the third. Everything was geared towards getting me back to Liverpool.’
Owen played at Anfield for the first time in his career as an opponent of Liverpool and returned home that night in December 2005 ashen-faced, with the jeers of those who once idolized him haunting his thoughts, the defeat freezing his soul. Those in the Kop did not realize Owen had tried so hard to become a Liverpool player once more and in the build-up to the match the focus was on the financial rewards he’d reaped by moving to Newcastle instead.
The home fans were merciless, the smattering of boos that accompanied his name when it was delivered over the public address system in the warm-up intensifying to a full-scale explosion when he received possession for the first time. Once Liverpool had eased their way into the lead and the gulf between the two sides had become clear, the insults were roared. ‘Where were you in Istanbul?’ slipped into ‘You should have signed for a big club’, though it was the strains of ‘What a waste of talent’ that cut Owen the deepest.
The reception disappointed Steven Gerrard. ‘I played with Michael for several years and he’s a world-class player,’ Gerrard said. ‘He’s a legend here but the fans didn’t want to see him go in the first place. He deserves a standing ovation here for the goals he scored.’
The memory still clearly pains Owen. He leans forward and his eyes become fixed while describing his feelings.
‘Going back for Newcastle, knowing that I’d done absolutely everything – trying to move heaven and earth – to get back, to then be booed, it hurt,’ he begins. ‘I’m fully aware that it wasn’t the whole stadium. If you get a hundred in a crowd of forty-five thousand you still hear it. But for one person to have booed, it broke my heart. I’ve never felt as low in my life sitting in the players’ lounge afterwards, with my family and my mum in tears. People within the club – Carra, the coaches, the staff – everyone was coming to me saying they were so sorry. Some said they were ashamed; it wasn’t how the club felt about me.
‘I was thinking, Liverpool fans booing me: how did it come to this? When I look at other players who have cost fortunes and given nothing back to Liverpool but they return with another club and the Kop sing their name, it’s pretty hard to take, especially when I gave my life to the club and scored all those goals, winning trophies. I cost Liverpool nothing and still made them £8 million, although I appreciate why some people think the fee wasn’t big enough. Hearing those boos, it represented the worst moment of my career, worse than the injuries.’
In Jamie Carragher’s autobiography, the defender reasons that Owen’s bond with the Liverpool support had not been as close as someone like Robbie Fowler. While Fowler was Liverpool’s player and underappreciated by England, Owen had long seemed like England’s player rather than Liverpool’s. Even with all the achievements, any player in this position would never be as popular, for Liverpool as a city widely considers itself a separate state from England.
‘Listen, I know I’m not alone. I’ve spoken to homegrown players at other clubs and they have the same gripes. Someone comes from Spain for a lot of money, they score a couple of goals and all of a sudden they’re a bigger hero than the person who’s been there for years and years, doing it consistently, year in, year out. These players get a song about them and you feel underappreciated.
‘Carra and I roomed together for donkey’s years. We were best mates. We’d talk about problems: injuries; playing through the pain barrier; the fear of getting dropped; him being moved around by Houllier; the pair of us being caught having a drink. We shared absolutely everything: about women, about money, about football – everything.
‘We’d have this conversation all of the time about why I didn’t quite have the connection that someone like Robbie Fowler had with the fans. Well, the first thing is, Robbie had already been there and done that; Liverpool already had a prodigal son. He was engrained as a legend before I came along. He was in their heart, the local lad. Maybe if Robbie hadn’t been there, I’d have been the chosen one. But Robbie was still at the club and he was the fans’ first love. I came along but I was from half an hour down the road. I wasn’t a Scouser as such, although I was mentally and at heart because my dad came from Liverpool.
‘As Carra rightly says, I scored a goal in a World Cup for a team other than Liverpool, which then threw me to wider prominence. Some Liverpool supporters might have wanted me to rise to prominence by my achievements in a red shirt. I’d have loved that. But I was scoring goals for both club and country. I couldn’t have tried harder for Liverpool. I suppose some people forget that sometimes.’
Liverpool’s supporters would certainly not forget Owen’s next big decision. The first six months at Newcastle had gone reasonably enough. Nowhere else in England does a centre-forward receive more adoration than Tyneside. When Owen arrived at St James’ Park, there were some eighteen thousand people in the stadium to see him sign, more than had attended Alan Shearer’s homecoming nine years earlier. He seemed to descend in a direct line from Hughie Gallacher, Jackie Milburn, Malcolm Macdonald and Shearer himself.
And yet the supporters never had a song for him and barely ever chanted his name. They objected to his £5 million-plus salary, they objected to his helicopter flights home to Cheshire most days because he did not want to relocate to the north-east. To those on the Gallowgate, Owen was a symbol of expensively bought failure, his tally of thirty goals in seventy-nine appearances unappreciated as he struggled with injuries.
A broken foot did not stop him from going to the World Cup in 2006 but a cruciate knee ligament injury sustained in a match against Sweden ruled him out for the rest of the tournament and beyond. Though there were spikes, from there Owen’s career was largely a corkscrew of decline. ‘Newcastle ended up being a bit of a disaster if I’m being honest,’ he admits.
The desire to return to Liverpool remained, however. ‘At every stage – every summer – I was on the phone to Carra telling him to find a way to get me back. “Does Rafa want me?” I’d say. “Does Kenny want me? Does Brendan want me?” It was circumstance that stopped it happening. Whenever I was available, Liverpool had too many strikers. And when Liverpool wanted me, I was injured. By the end, I wasn’t the player I had been before and they simply didn’t fancy me. I wasn’t good enough.’
Owen says his last attempt at a return came after a three-year spell at Manchester United. In choosing to move to Old Trafford after his contract expired at Newcastle, he appreciated the decision would destroy any positive legacy left behind at Anfield.
‘I knew Liverpool fans generally weren’t going to be happy,’ he says. ‘But I felt they’d made the first move by booing me in the first game against Newcastle and every game afterwards. I can’t emphasize enough how desperate I was to go back. In that summer after choosing to leave Real Madrid, I spoke to Carra every day of the week about it.
‘I couldn’t have revealed any of this publicly at the time, nobody could have, because I was signing for a club with black and white stripes. Had everyone known the details of my contract – that I could have gone back to Liverpool in a year. If they’d have known how hard I was trying to make it happen – meeting with Parry and Benítez. All of a sudden, it’s not great for Newcastle if fifty thousand people are thinking, Well, we’re his second choice. They probably knew that deep down but didn’t need me to rub anyone’s nose in it. You have to be professional and respect the people who are paying your wages. That’s the way in any walk of life.
‘I can only equate people booing me to a situation where your missus leaves you. Do you continue to love her? You probably do deep down and if they ever try it on again, you go back – even if they treat you like crap afterwards. Outwardly, though, you think, Sod it. If that’s how they think about me, then they’ve shown their true colours. I kept telling myself, It’s only a handful of people, it’s fine, it’s fine. But it wasn’t. It hurt me so much and it hurt my family so much.
‘It was 2009. I was twenty-nine. I had a few years of my career still ahead of me. There was interest from a few Italian clubs but I wanted to stay in England. I can’t even remember who they were because I just didn’t want to go abroad. So three clubs here approached me. They were Manchester United, Everton and Hull City. Hull were at the bottom of the Premier League and would probably end up in the Championship. I was left to choose between Everton and United.
‘It seemed to me that a lot of Liverpool supporters didn’t think very highly of me. But still, I spoke to Carra and tried to get Benítez to do something. I wanted to try to put it right somehow. When it became clear Benítez didn’t want to do a deal, I spoke again with [Sir Alex] Ferguson. He was very positive about me. I was twenty-nine years old. Should I have decided to retire there and then?’
Owen believes the decision was easier for him because he’d become immune to the emotions of football by then. This was a cold, hard choice of a careerist.
‘When you move club from the one you grew up playing for, you stop viewing football through the eyes of a fan,’ he reasons. ‘When I was at Liverpool, I had a red mist towards all of Liverpool’s rivals.
‘Once you move clubs, it changes. I went to Real Madrid from Liverpool. Being honest, how does anyone really expect me to hate Atlético Madrid in the derby? It just doesn’t happen. I wanted to win because I wanted to do well and I wanted the atmosphere in training to be good, to enjoy going to work. But I’d be lying if I said I had a deep-rooted passion for Real.
‘As soon as you start moving around, you lose all that. You start asking questions about what it’s really all about. When I watch football now, I watch it because I love it. I want Liverpool to do well and I like to see Everton do well because I used to support them. But with time, as you move on, you lose that one-club mentality.
‘I lost something when I left Liverpool. I lost my fan mentality. If you come through the ranks of a club, you have a professional-footballer mentality but you also have an allegiance. When I got sent off against Man United [in 1998 for two-footing Peter Schmeichel], I was so pumped up. I never wanted to win a game as much as that. Beating United at Old Trafford, what better feeling could there be? I was like a balloon. Once I got into the shower, stood on my own, it was as if something had popped me. All the air came out of me. I fell back down to earth. There was such rage inside me, such anger. I wanted to score a hundred goals and kick every one of their players. It was hatred.
‘As soon as you move, you get a wider perspective. You realize that, actually, there are nice people at other clubs and the lads are great. It takes the edge away. You begin to look at clubs because of the people there: the people you are working for. That’s why I went to Manchester United. Because I realized that Sir Alex Ferguson is actually an OK human being. The players were OK human beings as well. I never supported United; I never supported Real Madrid; I never supported Newcastle or Stoke. But I supported Liverpool. It was more than people. Liverpool was a movement, a way of thinking – my entire life. When I stopped representing that, things were not quite the same. My edge wasn’t there.’
Owen’s story is a reminder that a footballer is not defined just by what he achieves but also by how he is remembered. It proves to be a theme I return to later in the book when I meet Fernando Torres. Owen’s career finished at Stoke City in May 2013, after he played nine games that season, scoring one goal. I remind him that twelve years ago to that month, his two strikes won Liverpool the FA Cup final, inspiring the team to an improbable victory – much like Steven Gerrard in Istanbul, when Owen was no longer a Liverpool player.
‘I get asked all the time, “What’s the best moment of your life? Has to be the Argentina goal, surely?”
‘It wasn’t, no way, I tell them. That day in Cardiff, being 1–0 down in the heat to a top Arsenal side, plunging to the depths of despair because of the exhaustion, knowing we were being outclassed for long periods. To pull us out of the fire, to be the person that scored the two goals, to do your job and to know your family are watching – it was the best day of my life. No question about it.
‘The coach home, seeing supporters line the streets, singing and dancing, knowing we were going to Dortmund a few days later for the UEFA Cup final, having a party with a couple of hundred people sharing an occasion, knowing that everyone in that party was looking me in the eye, thinking, Fucking ’ell Mo, you’ve done well today, it makes me feel emotional. I realize now those occasions are so rare.
‘If I could bottle one day and experience it again, that afternoon in Cardiff would be it. It was like poetry. I wish the moment somehow lasted for ever.’