Michael Owen

Michael James Owen (born December 14, 1979 in
Chester, United Kingdom|UK) is an England|English
football (soccer)|football player currently
playing for Newcastle United F.C.. 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.

==Club career==

He first played for his primary school team in
Hawarden, Wales, breaking all local scoring
records in his first season. From the age of 4 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 F.C.|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 F.C.|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
veteran playmaker Steve McManaman in the following
1997-1998|98 season. Owen ended that season as
joint top scorer in the FA Premier League|Premier
League, scoring eighteen goals (equal with Chris
Sutton and Dion Dublin), as well as getting voted
as the PFA Young Player of the Year.

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 F.C.|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 UEFA Champions
League|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
Bosman ruling|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 euros 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 FC Dynamo Kyiv|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 CF|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. This is only
possible if Owen continues to play first team
football in a competitive league, although England
manager Sven-Göran Eriksson has said that Owen
will always be likely to be selected in the team.

On August 24 2005, Newcastle United F.C. 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.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/
4179194.stm. However, Owen claimed that he would
only be willing to spend a year on loan to them.
This came just a day after Everton F.C.|Everton,
traditional rivals of Owen's beloved Liverpool,
had a bid for the player turned down by the
Spanish club
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/e/e
verton/4176576.stm.

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.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/n
ewcastle_united/4196760.stm Roughly 20,000 fans
were present at Newcastle's home ground of St
James' Park for Owen's official unveiling as a
Newcastle player.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/n/n
ewcastle_united/4200808.stm

Clubs:
*Liverpool F.C.|Liverpool (1996-2004)
*Real Madrid (2004-2005)
*Newcastle United F.C.|Newcastle United
(2005-present)

Honours:
*FA Cup (2001)
*UEFA Cup (2001)
*League Cup (2001,2003)
*European Super Cup (2001)
*FA Community Shield|Charity Shield (2001)
*European Footballer of the Year (2001)
*PFA Young Player of the Year (1998)

==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 national football
team|England Under-21 team before he made his
debut for the senior team in a friendly match
against Chile national football team|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 Football World
Cup 1998|World Cup. His first goal for England,
against Morocco national football team|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 national football team|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 national football team|Argentina he
scored a sensational 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 the 2000
European Football Championship|2000 and 2004
European Football Championship|2004 European
Football Championship|European Championships and
the Football World Cup 2002|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 German national football
team|Germany in the 2001 qualifying campaign for
the Football World Cup 2002|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. 

In April 2002, he was named as England's captain
for a friendly match against Paraguay national
football team|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 September 2005, Owen has been capped
seventy-one times for England and scored
thirty-two goals: he now lies fourth in the list
of top scorers for the England team behind Bobby
Charlton (49 goals), Gary Lineker (48) and Jimmy
Greaves (44).

==Private Life==

Owen married his childhood sweetheart, Louise
Bonsall, on 25 June 2005.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/050624/19/uup4.html They
were engaged for over a year, from February 14,
2004. The couple have a daughter, Gemma Rose Owen,
born on May 2, 2003 in the same place where both
her parents were born - the Countess of Chester
Hospital, Chester, England.

The couple had initially planned to get married at
their home, Lower Soughton Hall (near Northop
Hall), 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.

As of August 2005, the couple are expecting their
second child.