192: Owen Hargreaves, Manchester United, Topps Match Attax Trading Card Game, 2008/09

Mat Jolin-Beech brings us the story of an injury-prone English footballer from the 2000s. This doesn’t exactly narrow things down so here are some clues: excellent hair; a cracking early signing for your Master League team on Pro Evolution Soccer 2; an interesting mid-Atlantic/German accent. Over to Mat for the rest.

 

Michael Owen’s glossy dossier proving his fitness shows that, if you try hard enough, and have access to a fancy printer, anything can happen. How else do you explain going from Newcastle United and having hamstrings made of old elastic bands, to moving to Manchester United, scoring a last-minute winner in the derby, and winning a Premier League winners medal? (Are you watching Steven Gerrard?) That post, along with the time-wasting wormhole that is YouTube, inspired this post on England’s other Owen. Owen Hargreaves.



He was ranked, in this Monday lunchtime’s video recommendation, as the best full England international to play abroad since David Beckham left these shores in 2003. Unsurprisingly, Hargreaves, who won four Bundesliga titles, three German Cups, an Intercontinental Cup, a German League Cup and a Champions League title with Bayern Munich, beat the likes of Jay Bothroyd and Shaun Wright-Phillips to this dubious honour.

 

Previously unheralded and unloved in Blighty, that all changed in the 2006 World Cup, where Hargreaves was Sven’s keystone in midfield, our best player of the tournament, and was able to score his shootout penalty at a time when we were unable to convert from 12 yards. Must be something to do with developing as a footballer in Germany. A transfer to Manchester United followed, as did another Champions League title, thanks to the rain and John Terry’s lack of balance, and three more league titles in red in Manchester.

 

However, patellar tendonitis put an end to his time at Old Trafford. His fragile knees ended his time there, with doctors seemingly unable to find a way to keep him pain free and playing. So much so, Hargreaves has said the injections given to him by the club’s medical team made his tendon “feel like glass” and that he was a “guinea pig”. I’d agree – but from the outside the club appeared to be doing everything it could for him. Plus guinea pigs moan a lot less.

 

So, at the end of three injury-ravaged years, in May 2011, his contract expired leaving Hargreaves a free agent and with the label of injury prone stamped across his glass knees. Showing England teammates do talk, he’d obviously been chatting to the other Owen, Michael, and got wind of the glossy dossier. But, revamping it for the 21st Century (paper documents are so old-fashioned don’t you know) he uploaded a series of daily YouTube videos of him exercising and proving his fitness. These are still available to watch next time YouTube sends you into a video wormhole.

 

Offers came in from Aston Villa, Tottenham Hotspur, Leicester City, West Bromwich Albion, Nottingham Forest, and Queen’s Park Rangers, amongst others. More on QPR later. But, in a massive dick move, he stayed in Manchester and went to the Dark (actually, the sky blue but don’t ruin my metaphor) side of Manchester City. While City won the league that season, injuries (surprise, surprise) limited Hargreaves to four appearances, meaning he didn’t receive a winner’s medal. After being released once more, he had a trial at QPR, but failed to land a contract.

 

The Hargreaves story is tinged for me. The move to City will forever mean he is a traitor. However, he was England’s best player in the mid-noughties and showed the way for young English players to be brave and to go abroad. Something happening more and more: Eric Dier, Jadon Sancho, Jude Bellingham among those to follow suit. What this tale does show more than anything, more than the German ability to score penalties being able to rub off on a Brit, or that going abroad is a good thing, is that daily fitness videos on YouTube can really make a difference. So that’s where Joe Wicks got his idea from.

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