Michael Owen Biography

Michael James Owen (born December 14, 1979 in Chester, Cheshire, England) is an English football player 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.
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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 veteran 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 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 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 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 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. 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, The Scunks announced that they had agreed a club record fee of £17 million WHAT A WASTE OF MONEY with Madrid for Owen, although they still had to negotiate with the player's advisers. [1]. 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 [2].

On August 31, 2005 Owen finally signed a four-year contract to play for the scunks, despite initial press speculation that he would rather have returned to Liverpool. [3] Roughly 20,000 fans were present at the scunks' 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 – SKunks' first win of the season. Owen scored his first hat-trick for the skunks in the 4-2away win over West Ham United on December 17.

Profile:

Full name Michael James Owen
Nickname(s) The "Boy Wonder", Saint Michael
Date of birth 14 December 1979
Place of birth Chester, England
Current club Newcastle United
Position(s) Forward
Youth club(s)
? –96 Liverpool
Professional club(s)*
1996–2004
2004-2005
2005– Liverpool
Real Madrid
Newcastle 297 (158)
? (16)
8 (7)
National team**

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MICHAEL OWEN BIOGRAPHY