Liverpool
(England), Real Madrid (Spain), Newcastle United (England)
Honours
2001
Golden boot (Liverpool)
2001 European SuperCup winner (Liverpool)
2001 UEFA Cup winner (Liverpool)
2001 FA Cup winner (Liverpool)
2003 League Cup winner (Liverpool)
2001 Charity Shield winner (Liverpool)
Biography
Michael Owen (born December 14, 1979 in Chester, Cheshire)
is an English football player of Welsh descent, currently
playing for Newcastle United. He has also famously 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.
He first 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 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.
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, 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, Owen was often linked with moves to
other clubs, although he initially remained loyal to his first
employers. However, due to stalled contractual talks in the
summer of 2004, and with only one year remaining on his contract
before he could leave the club on a free transfer like Steve
McManaman did, Liverpool sold Owen to the same destination, Real
Madrid, in Spain, but unlike the McManaman situation, pocketed a
fee of €12 million on 13 August 2004, with midfielder Antonio
Nunez moving in the other direction.
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 more forwards.
On August 24, 2005, Newcastle United announced that they had
agr. 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 .
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. 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. His recovery is going "very well" according to
Newcastle's caretaker manager Glenn Roeder. He is expected to
return to playing in early April.
