IT WAS NEVER MY AMBITION JUST to be a professional football player, it was my ambition to be the best player in the world. Everybody has one tournament that left an impression on them and the 1990 World Cup was the one for me. I was 10 or 11 at the time and it was just so exciting all the color, all the music and all the great players. It made me realize: This is football, this is what it's about.
Now that I've retired from football, I realize that to do what I did so young, I did have this mentality of relentless positivity. Looking back, I could miss 100 chances in a game and pick up the paper the next day and see people saying, "Oh, Michael Owen played rubbish" and think: Not one player in the world could have done what I did in that match. I could turn what people thought was a negative into a huge positive for some reason. It was bordering on delusion in many ways!
But in the '98 World Cup I felt like I was a youngster coming into a really experienced team. When you're 18, you want to get across that white line and score some goals. If I was playing alongside Alan Shearer, that was brilliant because he's great. If Paul Scholes and David Beckham were behind me, that was great too.
But if I'm honest, I found my first World Cup appearance for England a little frustrating. Most people would be excited they simply played in a World Cup, but that wasn't the bar I set myself. I wanted to be the best, and I wanted to be scoring goals, I didn't want to be coming on as a sub in our opening match against Tunisia at 2-0 when I couldn't influence the game.
To me, my World Cup didn't start until our second match, against Romania. We were losing 1-0 and needed to get back in the game, so it was an obvious choice to put a striker onto the pitch. So I came on and scored, tying the game, and that cemented my place in the team for the next game.
An Iconic World Cup Goal
This story is from the December 02 - 09, 2022 (Double Issue) edition of Newsweek US.
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This story is from the December 02 - 09, 2022 (Double Issue) edition of Newsweek US.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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