Liverpool signed Owen after he graduated from Lilleshall at 16, and joined the club on the Youth Training Scheme. With Owen's help, Liverpool's youth team won the FA Youth Cup in 1996. After four months, he signed professional forms for the senior team just after his seventeenth birthday in December 1996.
He made his debut for Liverpool 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 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 being voted the PFA Young Player of the Year by his fellow professionals.
In the 1998 World Cup, Michael Owen was the star for England and he became well-known worldwide. His goal against Argentina stunned the world.
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 Final, and was substituted in that game.
Due to winning the FA Cup and the UEFA Cup, Liverpool participated in the Charity Shield and the European Super Cup, to start the 2001-2002 season. Liverpool had won both matches with Owen scoring the second goal of a 2-1 win over Manchester United (Charity Shield) and the third goal in the 3-2 win over european champions Bayern Munich. 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, and his own stated ambition to some day play abroad, Owen was often linked with moves to other clubs. Then he moved to Real Madrid, for a fee of £8 million on 13 August 2004, with midfielder Antonio Nunez moving in the other direction as a make-weight.
The deal suited Liverpool because Owen had only one year remaining on his contract before he could leave on a free transfer (having previously lost Steve McManaman in a similar manner). It also suited Owen who had expressed a desire to play abroad.
Ironically, Liverpool then won the Champions League without Owen, while Real won nothing for the second successive season.
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 five goals in seven successive matches. He ended the season with a highly respectable thirteen 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 high-profile Brazilian forwards.
On August 24, 2005, Newcastle United announced that they had agreed a club record fee of £17 million with Madrid for Owen, although they still had to negotiate with the player's advisers. 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.
On August 31, 2005 Owen finally signed a four-year contract to play for Newcastle United, despite initial press speculation that he would rather have returned to Liverpool. Roughly 20,000 fans were present at Newcastle's home ground of St James' Park for Owen's official unveiling as a Newcastle player. 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 – Newcastle's first win of the season. Owen scored his first hat-trick for Newcastle in the 4-2away win over West Ham United on December 17. It was also a 'perfect hat trick', (meaning he scored with his left foot, right foot, and head).
On December 31, 2005, Owen broke a metatarsal bone in his foot in a match against Tottenham Hotspur. He underwent a successful surgery to place a pin in the bone, to help speed the healing process. He was expected to be out of action until late March, but the healing process didn't go as hoped and on March 24 he underwent a second, minor, operation. Owen then stated that he should be fit for the final few weeks of the season with Newcastle. His return to action finally came against Birmingham City on April 29 when he came off the substitutes' bench in the 62nd minute. After the match Owen stated that he was "not 100% happy" with his foot. He underwent a further x-ray and made himself unavailable for Newcastle's final game of the season.
After a knee injury during international duty in the 2006 World Cup, Owen will now be unlikely to return for Newcastle until early 2007 making it over a year between starts for Newcastle.
--Wikipedia
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