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Owen's instinct stifled in the long game

Nick Townsend
Monday 03 June 2002 00:00 BST
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The original article was a precious piece of artistry. Michael Owen discovered last night that replicas don't necessarily come cheap. Not in World Cup tournaments, anyway. Four years on from that defining moment in Saint-Etienne when the then 18-year-old shook the world with his audacity on what was his competitive international debut, the Liverpool striker looked a man overwhelmed by sheer burden of expectation in a game-plan that was alien to his instincts.

In this land where east extends an uncertain hand to west, John Lennon is immortalised with a museum of the man and his work at Saitama Super Arena, adjacent to where England foundered, as so often before, against Sweden. Imagine, the blurb goes, a day with John Lennon. Owen, the latter day Merseyside icon, can only have imagined that his team-mates might have given a decent pass a chance.

Even when the European Footballer of the Year received the ball at his feet, which was seldom – and even more rarely with that lithe frame half-turned towards goal on the shoulder of a defender, with the eyes narrowed, the body stiffened, ready to attack his quarry like the supreme predator he is – Owen was crushed by weight of numbers as the Sweden rearguard and midfield encircled him like tireless Scandinavian soldier ants.

How Sweden frustrated him. And Eriksson's strategy. And his team-mates' incapabilities. It was not until well into the second half that Owen finally seized on a half-chance. The side of the net rippled and the England contingent behind that goal rose to acclaim him only for the roar to die in their throats as the ball spun clear of the side-netting.

He wanted that first goal so much. So much that he foraged deep, sometimes so deep that he was more likely to see the white of David Seaman's eyes than Magnus Hedman's. But the fact that he rarely contrived a sight of goal was principally because the ball was delivered to him in old-fashioned knock-it-long English fashion. What you might call, in Owen's case, beyond the fringe. The watching Graham Taylor, now on broadcasting duty, who was damned for such tactics during his England tenure, must have worn a wry smile.

Even two years ago, at Euro 2000, Kevin Keegan's men were doing roughly the same. A few of us can recall how Owen, one day, beseeched us in very un-St Michael-like fashion: "What I don't need is the ball played to me at head height. That's what I don't need." Keegan's response to the striker's lack of goals was to substitute him in two games. Sven-Goran Eriksson stayed faithful to Owen, when perhaps he should have withdrawn him rather than the generally impressive Darius Vassell.

It was an evening when Eriksson desperately needed Owen to conjure a goal from his 36th cap and England's opening Group F game in which they deteriorated as the match progressed. Of the remaining trio of England's footballing "Fab Four", Steven Gerrard was absent, David Beckham was present though anything but correct, and it was only Paul Scholes, who, together with a diligent Owen Hargreaves in central midfield, produced the quality which might be expected from Eriksson's "world class" performers.

If that quartet's virtuosity is not in evidence, then it requires young, inexperienced players to play above themselves. Hargreaves and Vassell apart, they too often looked like schoolboys in search of a teacher at this level. They had better learn quickly. Or we must hope for the masters, Owen and Beckham, to justify their élite status. Otherwise, all England will be able to do is imagine... what might have been.

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