Michael Owen: Off the Record - Michael Owen

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He never felt the need.

      I always wanted to be a footballer so I always had an appetite for knowledge, but I never pressed Dad with technical questions. He was always on hand to guide me with subtle advice, but playing football came naturally to me. In recent years, however, I’ve pressed him a bit harder on the details of his life on the circuit. I know, for instance, that he scored for Chester against Aston Villa in the first leg of a League Cup semi-final. He calls it a ‘scrappy goal’. I’ve also discovered that he had his happiest times at Chester, which is why he settled a few miles from the club when his playing days were over.

      I think a lot about what it must have been like for him playing in such a different era. He’ll admit that he was something of a journeyman pro, touring the old Third and Fourth Divisions, and I can certainly imagine how hard that must have been. When he stopped playing he was forced to go straight out to work to support the five young children in our family. I have all my dad’s traits, so during my school years I was no more inclined than he was to discuss footballing careers in front of my friends. If they found out about my family’s footballing history, it was through the local newspapers, which commonly referred to me as ‘Michael Owen, son of former Chester striker, Terry’.

      Beyond Dad, there’s no history of playing football in the family. His father, Les Owen, who was in the navy, died in 1983 when I was three. I have only one memory of him, standing by the back door of the utility room in our family home smoking his cigar. I gather that Les loved his boxing. Later, when I had two fights in the ring, my dad told me that Granddad would have been so proud to see me box. That brought a tear to my eye, because I’ve never really had a granddad around. My mum’s father, Roland Atkins, though he was always known as Tommy, died when she was 12. He was a sergeant in the army during the Second World War and fought in Germany; during peacetime he ran the clothes business my mum eventually took on.

      Tommy’s wife, my mum’s mum and my nan, Isabel Atkins, came to live with us in an extension to the family home when she was 68. She was an avid fan of mine. Like my dad, she had this urge to be at all my games. She would give me a bar of Dairy Milk before the match to provide me with energy. You wouldn’t do that now of course, but it seemed a great idea at the time. Also, if I scored she would give me 10p a goal. She would stand there on freezing cold days, even when she was getting too old to do things like that. She died in 1994, just before I started playing for England U-15s, so my dad’s mum, Rose Owen, is my only living grandparent. She was the one who sent over a pile of sweets every Friday when Dad came home from work in Liverpool. Pocket money from her was a pound a week. She’s gone downhill in recent years and is now suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

      I have two uncles and an aunt, too: Dad had two brothers, John and Tommy, and a sister, Margaret; Mum was an only child. Margaret married José, who is Spanish, and they had three girls who are my only cousins. José and Margaret run a restaurant called Antonelli’s near Crosby, where they all live. My connections with the city where I play are stronger than some might realize. People are constantly coming up to me saying, ‘I know this or that member of your family in Liverpool.’ By an amazing coincidence, Jamie Carragher, my friend and colleague at Anfield, was a big fan of José and Margaret’s restaurant. When I told him about my family connection, he said, ‘That’s where I eat virtually every day after training!’

      My mum’s side of the family owned a clothes shop in Liverpool, and Mum and Dad took over the business until it ran into financial difficulties. They sold clothes on credit, and were undone by imports that were cheap enough to be bought without a loan. Mum then moved on to Iceland frozen foods, where she worked in the head office on Deeside, and Dad sold policies for Co-op insurance. He’s quite reserved, so he hated knocking on doors and trying to sell people things. But we weren’t the wealthiest of families, and as the business had gone belly up he had to do something to earn a living. There was no nest egg from his time in the game. We lived in a nice house in Hawarden, but with a mortgage and all the usual financial obligations. It was only when I made money out of football that I paid that mortgage off to enable them to live without debt. From what I can gather my parents had a lot of financial pressures, and had I not made it as a footballer it’s possible we would have had to sell up and move somewhere more modest.

      From my point of view, Dad didn’t make any mistakes in my upbringing. I think of him as the perfect father. He encouraged me, above all, simply to enjoy playing football, and now I’m a professional, and I’m happy with the way I am as a person and with how I play. I sometimes look at other players and wonder how they could have made it to such a high level without the kind of parental support I received.

      There is no one like my dad. He would go to absolutely every game I played. Mum attended almost all of my matches as well, and my younger sister Lesley was equally loyal. She would sit there in a snowsuit, trying to keep warm. At the Ian Rush tournaments for school-aged club teams that I played in, she became Liverpool’s mascot. We didn’t have a pot to pee in, yet Dad would stump up money to travel as far as Jersey for a single match. He couldn’t bear to miss a game, not even friendlies for the local club. And this fatherly encouragement wasn’t available just to me. If my sisters were playing hockey or netball in the most far-flung location, Dad would be there. Karen was a good runner and played hockey for the county; Lesley’s game was netball.

      Dad’s intention was simply to provide encouragement and support. I went through a patch as a kid when I just couldn’t play if he wasn’t there. If he was late, I would virtually stand still looking for his car, waiting for it to pull up. He soon learned to be on time. Even when I was 14 or 15 playing at Lilleshall, the national academy at that time – I was an England schoolboy competing at quite a high level by that age – my dad had to be in his usual position behind the goal. If he was on the sidelines or not present at all, I couldn’t perform. Other young pros might not want their dads to be at games. I can understand that point of view, if the parent puts pressure on the boy. Ninety-nine per cent of dads want their lads to be footballers. It’s the dream. But I think my dad just knew I was going to make the grade.

      I found out later that he’d told close friends I was definitely going to end up playing for England. Armed with that inside information, a few of them clubbed together and had a bet with the bookmakers on me wearing an England shirt. He was absolutely sure I would make it. But though he shared that confidence with his mates, he didn’t have to say anything to me. I just knew he thought I was a special player. He wasn’t the kind of father who would constantly tell me how proud he was. Words don’t speak as loudly as actions with my dad. I had years and years of him expressing his feelings just through his presence. There was a special bond between us.

      It sounds funny now, but every Thursday he’d give me a massive steak to build me up. Just to be strong. Just to be a footballer. He used to joke about me paying him back one day. While he was serving the steak, I’d join in the banter by saying, ‘Dad, for everything you do for me I’m going to get you a Mercedes one day.’ (I got him a Jaguar instead.) He did everything in his power to put me on the right track to become a footballer without actually saying that that was what he was doing. It was all about actions. My parents’ work schedules were built around my games.

      I never worried about getting special treatment because, as I said, Dad was consistent in his support for my siblings: no matter how important the match, he’d be there. When it became clear that my older brothers weren’t going to be footballers, he didn’t regard that as the death of a dream; he just wanted us all to do well at whatever we were doing. First and foremost, he wanted us all to be decent people. If you’re good at engineering, as my brothers are, then good luck to you – well done, son. The same applies to my sisters. His main message was: just be a decent human being.

      In some families there can be problems when one of the children is especially successful at something and becomes famous. That’s not an issue with us, because I have very sensible brothers. I’ve looked after them as much as I can, and because they love the game they can appreciate what I do on the football field. And that’s a good thing, because the phrase ‘the love of money is the root of all evil’ is the most true of all. If the family can’t handle it, wealth can be horribly destructive. I hear stories in dressing rooms about money and fame driving people apart. That’s where I’m so lucky. My family is so normal and

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