Owen, from the Golden Ball to the nightmare: “I hated football, I hid on the pitch and couldn’t wait to retire”

A career marked by injuries. Few as Michael Owen have reached unimaginable heights in such a short time, but the fall was as quick as the climb. It is very, very painful. Some time ago, in an interview with BT Sports, the 2001 Ballon d’Or told how a series of adductor injuries put an end to a footballing story that foreshadowed much more. The 1998 World Cup with the goal against Argentina, the award as the best player in Europe at the age of 21 and the move to Real. Then? Failure at the Bernabeu is the beginning of nightmare years for Owen, between shorter or longer stops and the awareness of not being himself anymore.

TERROR – “When I first injured my adductors, I was finished. For real. I changed my way of playing, I was no longer the one who scored goals like the one against Argentina. I jumped the opponents, I sprinted in the spaces, I crossed. That was me. But in the last six or seven years of my career, I have transformed myself into what I was able to be. I was terrified of being able to shoot when I had space. I knew I was going to tear my adductor. ” A fear that can change a career forever. “And the worst part is that my instincts told me to do as always. I was born to be a footballer. And instead I remember that when McManaman took the ball and could throw me deep I thought ‘no, you can’t do that, please. pass it short ‘“.

HIDE – Thoughts that have conditioned Owen in any movement on the pitch and that have led him to live a nightmare. ‘I’ve lost everything. And for those six or seven years I hated football. I couldn’t wait to retire, because the one who was on the pitch wasn’t me. And the worst part is that then I got into a state of mind where I wasn’t even putting myself in the position to shoot. And so I hid, I put myself in areas of the field where I shouldn’t even have been“A bitter confession, which revealed the sad end of the career of a footballer who at the beginning of the new millennium seemed to have everything to be Ronaldo’s successor.