Football: Owen out on his own

Seventeen going on finished article, Liverpool's boy wonder has allied a wider vision to his natural selfishness

More passionate viewers of the football coverage on Monday night would have been forgiven a strange sense of action replay as the swaying, scampering figure of Michael Owen cut through the centre of the Aston Villa defence in the dying minutes. Rewind a couple of years, switch venues from Anfield to St James' Park, but hold the image of a child sprinting around traffic cones. England needed to beat Scotland that day on Tyneside to win the annual Victory Shield, the home nations' tournament for under- 15s.

"Everything was going well," John Owens, the England Under-15 team manager, recalled. "We were 1-0 up and controlling the game when they equalised out of the blue." Owens swallowed his disappointment, but what followed will stick in his mind long after his coaching manuals have been shelved and his grandchildren have been bored silly by the memory.

"Michael got the ball back off his defenders and trotted back to the centre circle. You could see he was angry with the defence for letting in such a bad goal. He asked the other striker to pass the ball to him from kick-off, dribbled through and scored. Just straight off. It was the winning goal. The problem was that the people watching it on Sky television only saw him go round the last three or four players, but he actually went through the whole lot."

Though an under-15 coach at Liverpool as well, Owens claims no credit for the development of the precocious talent which last week had such grizzled old veterans as Tommy Smith and Phil Thompson advocating his immediate - and, probably, unwise - elevation to the full England squad announced by Glenn Hoddle tomorrow. An England debut before the World Cup would make Owen the youngest international, beating the record set by Duncan Edwards 42 years ago. Owen is 18 in December but was already the finished article at 15. "He was so far ahead, I just left him alone up front and played two wingers so that he could boss the whole of the area," Owens said. "It didn't need me to do much. Yes, I picked him, but I'd have been blind not to. It was that easy."

That schoolboy season, Owen scored 12 of England's 20 goals, beating the record set by Nick Barmby, the last boy wonder. But it was the quality as well as the quantity of the goals which marked him out as a natural. "They were not just the usual schoolboy tap-ins and ricochets off the shin. The best way I can describe them is that they were adult goals," Owens said. "A lot of schoolboy strikers have pace, but they are still going like a train when they get the ball and so mess up the shot. Michael's goals were calmly and clinically put away."

Owen scored 97 of them for Deesside Primary Schools, eclipsing by 25 the record set by Rush, the most prolific goalscorer in the club's history, and his 11 goals in five appearances took Liverpool to their first victory in the FA Youth Cup. It takes a special talent, though, to transport the knack into the more physical arenas of Europe and the Premiership as Owen has done so preciously in the absence of Robbie Fowler. The coolness of his finish in the 2-2 draw with Celtic in the first leg of the European Cup-Winners' Cup tie at Parkhead was worthy of an older head. "Very clever and cool," Gary Lineker said. "It's not just good technique, it's having the nerve to do it in that situation."

"He's not that big," Owens added. "But against big defenders he's learnt how to use his body to chop across players, encouraging them to foul him. He won't spend too long in front of a defender, he'll make a bee-line for the space behind which hurts defenders most and when he sees goal he's very direct." Yet already he is beginning to blend the natural selfishness of the born goalscorer with a wider vision. Ravanelli, Wright or Fowler might have sought to convert the electric run which set up the third goal against Villa into personal glory. Owen gifted the goal to Karlheinz Riedle.

The only blots on otherwise impeccable credentials were that Owen's father Terry once played for Everton and that the family lived in Hawarden, the home of William Gladstone, just across the Welsh border. Not until he was transferred to the FA National School of Excellence at Lilleshall at the age of 14 did Owen technically qualify to play for England not Wales. Once spotted, Liverpool did not let go. Despite persistent courting by other big clubs, Owen had no hesitation in signing his professional contract, a vindication of the loyalty Steve Heighway is so keen on cultivating through the embryonic Liverpool academy of excellence.

"I'd like to think here is a boy whose image every young fan - not just of Liverpool - can admire," Heighway said. "I want the manager to be able to trust a player all the time. In every game he's played for me I've told Michael not to dare let anyone else put the ball on the spot, to stand up and be counted." It bears out Roy Evans' description of "a confident kid with bags of ability" that Owen did so ahead of so many of his seniors, and scored with a youthful flourish.

What happens next depends on how a 17-year-old prodigy reacts to the accolades deluging him. Eight interview requests this past week, all politely deflected by Heighway, his minder, are a sign of pressures to come.

"He'll have no problem," Owens said. "You've got to be wary of putting too much on his shoulders, but he likes the limelight. He's a bright lad, confident without being arrogant." When Blue Peter came to film the England Under-15 squad, Owen was the team's chief spokesman. He has the badge to prove it, the first of many honours if such innocence is well protected.