Michael Owen is not over yet
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There is something particularly poignant about looking at Michael Owen’s career during international week. After all, it is his appearances and goals in an England shirt that have defined him.
And as long as England’s options are so limited that Darren Bent is only a pulled hamstring away from an emergency call-up, there is a reason to cling to the hope that there could be one last twist.
Owen’s chances of an England recall rank somewhere alongside those of Joey Barton or Alan Smith, two other players swept along with all the other wreckage of Newcastle United’s dismal campaign. But the knowledge that he has never been replaced as a striker of international repute makes it hard to resist a little daydreaming.
Would he really need to do so much next season to prove that the old fires still burnt, that the instincts for goal remained, and that he was a better option from the bench than Jermain Defoe? Whatever the evidence of the past 12 months – and Fabio Capello has not got where he is today by relying on flights of fancy – it is understandable if many of us have not wanted to dispense with Owen quite as readily as our hard-nosed Italian.
All of this might stack up as rather more than wishful thinking were it not for the fact that, first, Owen has to be restored as a Premier League striker of consistent form and fitness. And contrary to reports, Aston Villa and Everton are not rushing to draw up contracts with which to tempt him. They are not falling over themselves to snap up the country’s most notable free agent (if we are excluding Carlos Tévez, who is so “free” as to come with a £25 million fee).
Martin O’Neill and David Moyes would have taken Owen six months ago, without question, assuming that the price was right. But the reasons for increased wariness now are obvious.
Owen has just endured his longest spell without a goal in 12 years since, whippet-thin, he started sticking them away for Liverpool. Any decent manager would at least want to investigate how much of that is down to fading powers and how much it is a question of Owen being dragged down by the mess around him at Newcastle.
Owen’s confidence was evidently shattered in recent months. Can it easily be rebuilt? Was he not scoring because he was playing deep, because he was not getting the chances – Sky recorded that he had just four opportunities in five games – or has the loss of extreme pace blunted him?
They would also want to look into the whites of his eyes and ask hard questions about his desire to extend his career beyond his 30th birthday in December.
Owen, understandably, has always prided himself on his ability to raise himself for the biggest games and it was his knack of scoring at crucial times, under the greatest pressure, that made him so valuable. But now the test is to prove that he is up for every challenge, every week.
There are plenty of clubs who have already concluded that Owen retains the desire and the ability to stick them away. The trouble is, they are not the outfits that Owen would rush to join. There have been foreign offers, from Serie A in Italy, from Galatasaray in Turkey, and others, but he is unlikely to want to uproot his family. It was the eagerness to come home from Spain that led to his hasty embrace with Newcastle, a transfer that cost Newcastle an awful lot of money and has cost Owen his England place and a whole lot of professional pain.
Owen will want to stay in England, and as high up the league table as possible, although it is certain that he will not be picked up by the top four. That will hurt, given that Liverpool and Manchester United wanted him, but just not at the £16 million fee, when he returned from Real Madrid in 2005.
So Owen is left to wait on Everton and Villa to weigh up their options, and to fear for their answers. There is plenty of life lower down the table – David James could tell him of happy times and an Indian summer at Portsmouth – but to start dropping his eyes to mid-table and below will take a huge readjustment in expectations for a player who, not too long ago, had the world at his feet.
Perhaps it is time for the rest of us to do the same: to readjust, to accept that a glittering international career of 89 caps and 40 goals has run its course; that the sight of Owen sliding the ball past a goalkeeper and wheeling away with that boyish grin is something only for the memory banks; to be thankful that we will always have Saint-Étienne. But we would do so very reluctantly.
England are thriving under Capello, but even the England manager would acknowledge, privately, that he is unconvinced by his attacking options save for the space-clearing foil of Emile Heskey.
It is why, in weeks such as this, even as he is courted by the likes of Wigan Athletic, the mind can still drift to Owen and a tantalising “what if…”
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