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deserves it. People are getting paid left, right and centre on the basis of promise rather than achievement. In the past, you got the money when you made it to the top; now, there are people getting paid well for being good one year and ordinary two seasons on.

      But there will never be any lack of gratitude on my part at how football has changed the lives of the Owen family. And it’s my mum and dad who deserve the credit. Throughout those early years, my parents were a constant presence. Interestingly, the highlight for them, of my whole career so far, remains an Under-15 England v Scotland game in Newcastle on 28 April 1995 in which I scored in a 2–1 win. Right from the restart after Scotland had equalized the ball came to me and I ran all the way through their team to score. What made it so special for them was that all the Owens and the Donnellys had gathered to watch the game. The Donnellys were my dad’s Scottish relatives, and many of them came south to watch the match. He got dozens of tickets and was as proud as punch just to see me in an England shirt in that setting. When the final whistle went I ran up to the crowd, found Dad and hugged him. He was crying; in fact, the whole family was sobbing. It just meant so much to us. It was only Under-15s, so nobody outside the family will remember it, but the Owens will never forget that day. (I should add that Mum has her own private highlight: the day I won the 1998 BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.)

      The most meaningful international goal I’ve scored was either the one against Brazil in the quarter-finals of the 2002 World Cup or the one I struck against Argentina four years earlier, but that goal against Scotland in Newcastle was certainly the finest. I may never score one of higher quality. I ran through the entire Scotland team and smacked it into the top corner. I’m not sure the Donnellys appreciated how good it was, but the Owens certainly did.

      Long before I signed professional forms for Liverpool, which I did on my seventeenth birthday in December 1996, I did the rounds, checking out some of the clubs who had expressed an interest in me while I was at Lilleshall. I didn’t particularly enjoy that process because I’ve never relished the experience of turning up at a place where I don’t know people. But I always felt comfortable at Liverpool. I’d been there in my school holidays and, of course, had signed Centre of Excellence forms. This was a fairly loose arrangement and didn’t commit us to each other, but already a bond was being formed. I was becoming reassuringly familiar with the players, the coaches and the other staff at the academy. As I said, one of my dreads in football has always been walking into a dressing room where I don’t know anyone. The thought kills me. But, quite rightly, Dad wanted me to accept a few invitations to visit other clubs and extend my education.

      I went to Manchester United and spent a week or two there undergoing trials. I always had the impression that United wanted to bring me into their successful youth system. It was when I went to watch a game at Old Trafford that I first came face to face with the man who had shaped the careers of David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and the Neville brothers, Gary and Phil. Plainly I was in an environment where homegrown talent was valued very highly.

      It’s here that I have to make a confession that many readers will find odd. I had no raging desire to play for Manchester United ahead of all other clubs, and even in Sir Alex’s formidable presence I couldn’t pretend that I did. Before the match we had the traditional meal in the stand, and then we went to Ferguson’s office. I will always remember him looking me straight in the eye and asking, ‘So, do you want to play for Manchester United?’ The question was so big and so simple that it threw me off balance. I was sitting opposite one of the world’s leading managers, and I wanted so much to become a professional footballer. But I was a kid, and I didn’t want to lie, so something stopped me from giving him the straightforward answer he was seeking. The truth was that I didn’t want to play for Manchester United more than any club in the world. I had no special feeling for them. There was no basic allegiance of the sort a local lad might have felt. So my answer was ‘sort of’, followed by a meandering ‘yes’. I just couldn’t have stood in front of him and said, ‘Oh, yes, Mr Ferguson, I’ve always been dying to play for Manchester United.’

      As much as I respected him, I was extremely nervous in his company. It wasn’t a fear of being bullied; more a case of finding the whole routine uncomfortable. It required me to hold conversations I wasn’t ready to have. So, generally, I found myself agreeing with a lot of what managers said – being diplomatic, I suppose.

      ‘Do you want to be a professional footballer, son?’

      ‘Yeah, I do.’

      That’s pretty much the way it would go. You only really give one-word answers when you’re a kid, don’t you?

      I don’t know what Alex Ferguson made of it, but I do know that Brian Kidd, his assistant, had been to watch me lots of times and had got to know my dad quite well. For a while, if United didn’t have a game on the Saturday Brian Kidd would often be on the touchline to see me play. The United scouts stayed in touch and asked Dad to let them know when it was decision time on which club I was going to choose. If I’d been older, I might not have been quite so naive in front of Sir Alex, but at that tender age I was listening to my heart more than my head. I wasn’t old enough to make calculations about who was the biggest club or who might have the brightest future.

      I also went for a week’s trial at Arsenal, and then, later, to Highbury to watch a match against Coventry, who won the game with the help of a hat-trick by Mickey Quinn. We watched from one of the new executive boxes at the Clock End, with smoked salmon and other delicacies to tempt us. I’d never seen smoked salmon before, and I’m not sure my parents had either. We were all pretty nervous in that environment. An hour before kick-off Arsenal’s chief scout took me out of the box and down to the dressing room. The Arsenal players were getting ready for the match, and I especially remember Ian Wright making a big fuss of me. As he bounded over, there was a cry of, ‘Hey, how are you, mate?’ Being naturally shy, my response probably didn’t quite match Wrighty’s enthusiasm.

      From the changing rooms I was taken to meet George Graham, still the Arsenal manager at that time, who shook my hand and said, ‘I hear you’re a good player, we’d love to sign you.’ But he was speaking, of course, to a child, and I just about managed to mumble, ‘Oh, great, thanks.’ I never went to these clubs to give them a tick or a cross on my list of possible destinations. It wasn’t about finding the right team; it was more a case of my dad wanting me to see these great clubs and meet the people who had made them what they were. It was an educational process, and I didn’t experience it as pressure. I just assumed that the big clubs provided that kind of welcome for every promising young player. Only now do I realize that no manager would waste his time with a kid unless he was really keen to have him on the books. It’s only now that I understand how privileged I was to be given time by some of the most prominent people in the English game.

      At Arsenal I didn’t have to prove what I could do. I think I scored four in a game my team won 5–4, but they were already making a huge fuss of me before I actually pulled on one of their shirts. They had a scout in North Wales who must have been sending down glowing reports, because the Arsenal staff couldn’t do enough for me. At some clubs you have to prove your worth in a formal trial. They don’t automatically take the scout’s word, but Arsenal clearly did. So my time there was more about the club showing how much I would be valued and what a terrific youth system they had.

      Chelsea was another stop on the tour. I went there for a game against Sheffield United, and this involved another dressing-room visit. I couldn’t believe how small their players were. In those days they had John Spencer, Gavin Peacock and Dennis Wise, who all seemed about the same size as me. Glenn Hoddle was the manager. It would have been stretching even a child’s imagination to believe that this was the start of an association that would take us both to the 1998 World Cup as England striker and manager. When I walked into his office, Hoddle had written my name on a board. He studied me for a while, then said, ‘Look, there are a lot of youngsters we’re after, but as you can see, you’re top of our list.’ Later I did ask myself whether he’d written the list a few moments before I entered his room, or whether I really was Chelsea’s number-one target.

      I also went training with Everton. I didn’t get to meet the manager, though Joe Royle, who was in charge at Goodison Park, did phone my dad to express

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