RICHARD WILLIAMSwatched as Michael Owen wrote his name in Manchester United folklore
WHEN MANCHESTER City scored their third equaliser with 10 seconds of the 90 minutes left on the clock, thousands of home fans rose from their seats and headed for home. Assistant England manager Franco Baldini had already left.
All of them missed perhaps the most dramatic goal Michael Owen has scored since the summer night in 1998 when he scampered through the Argentina defence and wrote his name in the Saint-Etienne sky.
Baldini will no doubt watch it on television, as will his boss, Fabio Capello. In itself, the clinical finish in the sixth minute of added time might not be enough to persuade the England management team to find a place for Owen in their squad before next month’s qualifying matches against Ukraine and Belarus. But the goal ensured that however long the striker’s time at Old Trafford lasts, it will not go unremembered.
This was Owen’s second league goal in a United shirt, to follow the one he scored at Wigan a month ago, and again it evoked memories of his great years. After City, under incessant assault, had failed to clear their lines properly, a superbly alert Ryan Giggs provided Owen with what will be seen, should United go on to win the title by a single point, as the decisive pass of the season.
Just as he had done against Wigan, Owen created the opportunity by drifting left and opening up a space between defenders. Hit with enough pace to take the defenders out of the game, Giggs’s pass invited Owen to control the ball with a single touch and, with the fate of an overheated derby at stake, calmly guided his shot past Shay Given’s left hand.
At a stroke, he had put those of us who questioned the 29-year-old’s continuing ability to hold his nerve in such situations firmly in our place. There were plenty of sceptics ready to question Alex Ferguson’s decision to take Owen on a free transfer from Newcastle. It seemed too easy an option for the Manchester United manager, one perhaps intended to provide a little camouflage for his apparent inability, for whatever reason, to use the cash accrued from the sale of Cristiano Ronaldo and saved by the decision not to retain Carlos Tevez.
While Tevez and Ronaldo packed their bags and said their goodbyes, Karim Benzema went from Lyon to Real Madrid and Sergio Aguero stayed at Atletico Madrid. The arrival of Owen, whose year at Real Madrid and four injury-disrupted seasons at Newcastle United seemed to have cast a remarkable career into premature decline, hardly matched the impact of other star strikers imported to Old Trafford amid loud fanfares like Dimitar Berbatov.
It was Berbatov whom Owen replaced with 13 minutes of yesterday’s match remaining. In Ferguson’s view, the Bulgarian could have had five goals during his time on the pitch. Neutrals would probably have settled for two, from the pair of powerful headers that drew tremendous saves from Republic of Ireland international Shay Given.
Ferguson called it “a fantastic performance by Berbatov”, but too often the €33 million striker behaved as though he had been paying too much attention to the words attributed to Marlon Brando in response to a question about his acting technique: “Just because they shout ‘action’, it doesn’t mean you have to do anything.”
“In the last two weeks he’s been doing very well in training,” Ferguson said of Owen. “He’s become sharper and his focus has been very good. His positional sense and his finishing are exceptional.”
Owen said he felt more nervous coming on as a substitute than he did when starting a match. “You watch the game from the bench,” he observed, “and you find yourself kicking every ball.” By kicking the one that counted, under colossal pressure, he added yet another line to Ferguson’s long list of managerial coups.
Guardian Service
