‘Lost Talent’ Michael Owen Signs for Stoke City

Michael Owen signed for Manchester United in 2009. Photo credit: Super MF http://flic.kr/p/6BJA9r

The background

Michael Owen (remember him?) has signed a one-year, pay-as-you-play contract with Barclays Premier League club Stoke City. At just 18 years old, Owen electrified the 1998 World Cup and went on to star for Liverpool, Real Madrid and Newcastle United. Poacher supreme Owen scored 40 goals in 89 internationals. However, in recent years, Owen has been dogged by serious hamstring and knee injuries and has started only one league game in two seasons for Manchester United.

Owen enthusiastically tweeted: “Delighted to have signed for Stoke subject to Premier League approval. We have been in talks for a while and it was a club I was always keen to join. I’m particularly excited at the prospect of working under Tony Pulis. He has assembled a great squad that I look forward to joining.” However, it is widely reported that Owen’s preference was to sign for his old club Liverpool but they passed on him.

32-year-old Owen could make his Stoke debut against champions Manchester City a week on Saturday once the Premier League board gives its approval to his arrival in the Potteries.

Owen was never fully appreciated

Writing at The Independent, James Lawton argued that Owen has been criminally undervalued and under-used by both his club and international managers: “Owen was never quite appreciated for what he was – a natural scorer of astonishing precocity who ran so fast, so acutely, that English football, having quickly taken him for granted, too quickly discounted his unique value.” Lawton said that Owen is “a great goal-scorer in whom maybe too many in English football did not believe in quite enough.”

During his short stint at Real Madrid, Owen scored 18 goals from 41 games, only 15 of which he started.

Lost talent Owen’s last hurrah

“Stoke can give lost talent Owen his last hurrah,” said Liam Twomey at Goal.com, who said Owen’s “move to the Britannia Stadium highlights how far the 32-year-old has fallen from the pinnacle of the game, but it is still a deal which could benefit both parties.” Stoke are a unfashionable, workmanlike outfit who some pundits pick to struggle this season. “The idea that the paths of player and club would ever converge was beyond fanciful,” noted Twomey. “The fact that they have is testament not only to the Potters’ remarkable rise under Tony Pulis over the past five years, but also to Owen’s equally astonishing fall.”

For most who watch Owen these days, the lingering feeling is invariably one of what might have been,” sighed Liam Twomey at Goal.com. “All we can hope for at this stage is that he conjures one more memory to savour.”