Michael Owen, ex-England star striker, tells TOI the team’s strength is in the attack but the manager is relying too much on a defensive set-up...
Whenever Michael Owen closes his eyes, and dreams of himself in an
England
shirt, he sees an 18-year-old boy wonder jinking through the Argentine defenders in Saint-Etienne at the 1998 World Cup and scoring that goal.
A goal iconic enough to draw comparisons with a Maradona moment. “I think that’s the one that people remember me for,” the 44-year-old tells TOI.
A member of England’s Golden Generation, Owen best understands the pressure that the current lineup feels as it struggles at the Euros in Germany. Owen knows pressure is unavoidable but points out that there is more to England’s malady than just this. Excerpts from a chat...
England started off as one of the favourites, but they are not playing well. What do you think is going wrong?
It’s been quite difficult to watch so far. We’re trying to build momentum in the tournament. I think
Gareth Southgate
’s probably going to change his team a little bit against Slovenia to try to find that missing ingredient. We’re going to be all right. We still have time to build.
It’s not all doom and gloom. We’ve got four points and we’ll be in the knockout stage. Looking at the positives, I don’t think many teams that win tournaments start the tournament winning 5-0 and keep going in that vein. If England had won five-nil in the first two games, we’d all be saying, England are going to win the tournament. And maybe that’s not the attitude or the mindset that we want our players to have or our supporters.
But two matches down, what do you think is not working for the team?
I knew coming into the tournament I was going to be frustrated. I think Southgate is an amazing manager in terms of man-management. He creates a great environment. He has great attention to detail. He’s been there before as a player. He knows what works.
He’s an exceptional manager in a lot of ways. But I knew coming into the tournament that I would be disagreeing with his team. Southgate has always played with two holding midfield players, and I’ve never believed that you need two. Look at the most successful teams. Look at all the Premier League teams – they all play with one. Rodri plays for Manchester City, probably the best team in the world at the moment. They just play with one. Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Man Utd all play the same. I just think it’s too defensive to play with two.
Here, Declan Rice has been joined by Trent Alexander Arnold. Maybe in the next game, it might be a Kobbie Mainoo or Adam Wharton or a different midfielder, but I don’t think we should be playing that. I think our strength is our attack. And how many players we can have that affect games. Declan Rice as the No. 6 is more than enough. We can play our back four. We can play Rice and then we can play two ahead of Rice and then two wide players and Harry Kane up front.
So, I would be trying to get a more attacking team. I’d be trying to get one more player that’s more of an advanced player, a
Cole Palmer
, who’s had an amazing season for Chelsea. I would be trying to get him into our team, but this is not a surprise with Southgate. I knew he would be playing with two holding midfielders. We didn’t know who he would be playing with Rice. I have a feeling he’s going to stick with the same system, which is frustrating, but he might change one or two of the players.
You think England are not being too brave?
Absolutely. I think our strength is in our attacking players. We have players like Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden, Palmer, obviously Harry Kane as a striker. Anthony Gordon has had a great season at Newcastle. I’d love to see him play. And then we got players like Jude Bellingham that are good from an attacking point of view. There are so many good attacking players that we need to squeeze into the team.
What is the best way to involve Trent Alexander-Arnold?
I’ve always seen him as a right back. He is very dangerous when he comes into the midfield for Liverpool. But coming in from a right back position when nobody is marking you, and then coming in and being on your own is very, very different than just being a player that stays in midfield and has to receive the ball from a right back. (Because) then you’ve got people behind you, it’s a 360 degrees position, whereas playing at right back everything’s in front of you. You’ve really only got 180 degrees to look at. So, I think it’s a very different role. And even though he ends up in that position playing for Liverpool, it’s so different to actually staying in that position to start with.
Southgate probably won’t play him as a right back. He’ll play other players there. But I would like to see Rice being the No. 6 and playing Foden and Bellingham ahead in midfield. And I would play Saka or Palmer and Gordon or Palmer. Just try to get an extra attacking midfield player instead of the No. 6.
You made a case for Cole Palmer…
Anybody that’s watched the Premier League last season would see that even in a struggling team like Chelsea were for a large part of last season, Palmer was just outstanding, scored lots of goals; he can take the ball, he’s very brave; he’s young and he’s confident; he’s creative, he scores goals. I find it difficult looking at England’s bench and seeing his name, knowing what he could contribute on the pitch. If I were Southgate, I’d be trying to desperately find a role on the pitch for him.
Do you think Southgate is confused about his starting eleven that way?
I don’t think he is. Well… in some ways he is. He’s always played in this way and the criticism has always been the same. This is not a new tournament for him. You know, in the last two tournaments, everybody has said, why do we play so defensive? Why are we playing two ‘Sixes’ or midfield players? He has always done this, which is why I knew I’d be frustrated that some of our best players were going to have to be on the bench. Maybe what he’s confused with now is who to play as the other No. 6 because we always had Kalvin Phillips and Rice in previous tournaments.
Phillips is not there now. Jordan Henderson is not there either. And trying to find that replacement is what he’s a bit confused about. But if it was me, I wouldn’t be trying to find a replacement. I’d just be leaving Rice there on his own and getting one of the other great players in the team. What I’m debating and what I’m arguing with is not the players necessarily he’s selecting, it’s more the system. And if he’s going to play that system, of course he can’t play Cole. He can’t play a lot of players that I would love him to play. He’s not done that for a long time. I don’t think he’s going to change now.
Do you think players should take more responsibility for their performances?
I think players, at the end of the day, do take responsibility. They’re the ones that are out on the pitch and they’re the ones that get criticized. So, I totally understand Harry Kane saying what he said (reacting to Gary Lineker’s comments). I thought his words were very well measured and very responsible and on behalf of the team, as the captain, I thought it was very good.
You’re never going to change pundits. If it’s not Lineker, it’s somebody else. Pundits are being paid to give an opinion. But then again, it’s very accurate for Kane to come out and say, hang on a minute, some of you have played before. You know how difficult it is to play in a tournament. You know how difficult it is to represent England with all the pressure, expectations.
What is unavoidable is playing for England, the expectation is perhaps different to any other nation, and I find it hard to find a solution and how we’re going to make things better in the future. Because you will always have this pressure.
The longer we go without winning a tournament, the more pressure grows, the more difficult it is to be able to cope with it. Then your confidence is being drained by people that are criticizing you all the time and the pressure mounts and you don’t play well. It’s just very difficult being an England player. It has been very difficult being an England player for a long time now. But I don’t really know the solution.
You’re never going to stop people having an opinion and you’re never going to stop players reading that opinion and listening to it and then fans listening to their opinion and then having their own opinion. If the game isn’t going well, they then boo their players. And then we get into this whole cycle, it’s just we’re all almost cutting each other’s throats. Fans, pundits, media, players, we’re all then fighting against each other and then we’ll get knocked out and it’ll be a big disaster, big inquest. It’s not easy at all.
We’ve got great players, but we have a lot behind the scenes that these players have got to cope with as well.
What about your generation?
The pressure was probably on me and my teammates more than any player in the last few decades. We were classed as a golden generation that everybody thought would go and win competitions. We had heaps of pressure on us. And that is why I can talk about it with expertise and insight of actually being in that dressing room when the pressure was probably at its highest. I wouldn’t say there’s as much pressure now, as there was on our generation. It’s something that you’ve got to be able to manage as an England player. Not every player can do it. And one of the big criticisms over the years is, why don’t our players play as good for England as they do at club level? And that is true. You can only put it down to the pressure.
Michael, if you close your eyes right now and think about your favourite moment in an England shirt, what would it be?
Oh, wow. Well, I would say the goal in the World Cup against Argentina. I had some amazing moments. I scored in the European Championships quarterfinals (against Portugal, 2004), in the World Cup quarterfinals in 2002 against Brazil, but we ended up losing those games. We ended up losing against Argentina as well. Scoring a hat-trick away against Germany in the World Cup qualifiers was amazing. But I think the one moment what people remember me for, and probably my one iconic moment, was scoring that goal against Argentina as an 18-year-old in the World Cup.
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