Manchester United’s Michael Owen is known as one of the best strikers of his generation. In 1998, he became England’s youngest player and goalscorer at the time. The 1998 World Cup made him a household name and he’s the only player in history to ever have scored in four major tournaments for England. In international play, he is England’s seventh most-capped player and has scored a national record of 26 competitive goals, with 40 in total from 89 appearances, most recently in 2008.
Owen’s long injury absence after the 2006 World Cup resulted in a dispute between FIFA and The FA and Newcastle United, and eventually resulted in an unprecedented £10m compensation award to Newcastle, and brought changes to the compensation arrangements between club and country regarding injuries sustained by contracted club players while on international duty.
He was signed to Manchester United in 2009 to a two year deal. At the beginning of last month, he re-upped with the Old Trafford club for another year
In advance of the Reds friendly with the Chicago Fire, a reporter asked him his ambitions for the remainder of his career, beyond just getting on the team this year.
“In my opinion, and I’m sure everyone would agree, we’d like to have the best team out there,” he told the media.
“Where do you go from here? The only way is down. It’s exciting for me being part of a club that is always competitive. As we know they’re always only so many games in a season, only so many games to go around. We tend to get quite far in competitions, there’s lots of extra games to go round and we obviously hope that this year will be the same. We have got a big squad, but you never now when injuries are right around the corner. And more often than not we’ve got two games a week,” he said elaborating the need for depth over a long season.
As Owen may indeed be past his prime, one has to wonder where he really fits in with the Reds this EPL season. As great as he’s been, he’s suffered quite a few injuries this year, and his short tenure with United has featured major injury cutting short his playing time as well.
But right now he’s enjoying a preseason summer tour; with many international stops along the way.
“So far we’ve had a great time here in the U.S. There’s been lots of support, even around our hotel, there’s been lots of fans, it’s been great to see our support on the other side of the Atlantic,” he said.
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net, an official Google News site that generates millions of unique visitors. He’s also a regular contributor to Chicago Now, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker, and Fox Sports You can follow him on Twitter