Читать книгу Michael Owen: Off the Record - Michael Owen - Страница 11

My story should probably have a line down the middle, drawn on 30 June 1998, the night England played Argentina in St Etienne in my first World Cup. Before that day I was an 18-year-old striker trying to establish himself for club and country; after that date I couldn’t play a round of golf or get into my own home without it being a public event.

I can trace much of my good fortune in football to the evening when I lined up in one of the best England teams I’ve represented. And I will always be grateful for the praise and the warmth of the English public when I returned home to a new life. It’s a fallacy to think you can build a career around one goal, and I like to think I’ve achieved a few things before and since. But that Argentina game taught me something about myself and started a process that has given me and my family financial security for life.

In the camp, we knew throughout the group stage that we had a good chance of running into Argentina in the next round – which was frustrating, because no World Cup contender wants to be playing the really big opponents as early as the last 16. Not that we’d been in a position to be choosy: after losing to Romania, we had to beat Colombia just to be sure of going through. Equally, we knew we could beat them. We weren’t remotely scared of them or their reputation. I don’t think there was any team in France that caused us to be afraid, because we had a really good team that summer. We had a stronger sense of identity than in any year I’ve known, though we really fancied our chances in Japan and South Korea four years on. At Euro 2000, in contrast, there was no buzz and no confidence in the team – nor in my own heart.

In 1998 I felt we had a real beast of a team – mature, talented and robust – so we didn’t shrink in the face of Argentina, even though they were able to call on such talents as Ariel Ortega, Juan Sebastian Veron, Gabriel Batistuta and Claudio Lopez. We just wanted to bring them on. For the second game in a row I was named in the starting eleven, which Glenn Hoddle announced as follows: Seaman, Gary Neville, Adams, Campbell, Anderton, Beckham, Ince, Le Saux, Scholes, Owen and Shearer.

In St Etienne in southern France that night there was an explosive start to the most dramatic match of the tournament. Very early on in the game I remember noticing how deep Argentina were defending. They were sitting way back, as if they were petrified of our pace up front. ‘Tactically,’ I thought, ‘there’s something wrong here.’ Every time I received the ball I fancied my chances of causing havoc. They were giving me so much room between the midfield and defence that I had lots of time to crank up my runs. I also felt they were scared to throw in a proper tackle.

They went 1–0 up with a penalty from Batistuta after Diego Simeone had tripped over David Seaman’s outstretched hands. Penalties are one of the touchiest subjects in modern football. It’s hard to discuss them sensibly because the slightest ambiguity in the words you use will have people looking for sinister motives. Being awarded a penalty is an art, but not in the sense that you have to ‘win’ them dishonestly. The English are only just learning that you can force defenders to make incorrect or inaccurate tackles, which you can then exploit. You have to make the other team make mistakes and capitalize on them. That’s not the same as simulation or deception, which I despise.

Let me explain. For Batistuta’s penalty, nobody will ever convince me that he was incapable of staying on his feet. The truth is that he was waiting for Seaman to dive at his legs before he made his downward move. As soon as our goalkeeper slid in, Batistuta toe-poked it past him, caught Seaman with his foot and then went down. But I’m not denying that it was a penalty; neither am I saying that I wouldn’t have done the same. If the keeper or a defender is going to be enticed into throwing himself at you, you have to be saying, ‘Come on, I’m in your penalty area, come and kick me if you think you can do it within the laws. Kick me at your own risk.’ Batistuta was well within his rights, but there’s no doubt in my mind that he was playing for the penalty.

When I was running into their box around four minutes later, I was more checked than kicked, which is probably why people questioned the referee’s decision to award a penalty. If that foul had been committed outside the area, nine times out of ten you’d have been given a free-kick; in the area, it has to be a stone-cold certainty for the referee to point to the spot. So I’m still not certain mine was a penalty. It remains one of those contentious ones. But what I will say is that if you are racing into a penalty area, especially with the light frame I had back then, then you can’t keep your balance if you are kicked or checked when you are moving at breakneck speed. In those situations, every muscle in my body is being propelled in one direction, and there is only one aim in my head: to score. As much as I was waiting for someone to throw himself at me in St Etienne, if no one had gone near me I would have carried on running and then tried to score.

I’ve been taught this from my earliest days as a kid and as a footballer. If you’re galloping 20 yards from the box and bearing down on goal, don’t run alongside the opponent. If two players are running straight, like Olympic sprinters sharing a lane, it’s easy for the defender to flick out a boot and knock the ball away. If you knock it across their path diagonally, they’ve either got to slow down to let you through, time their tackle perfectly or bring you down. It’s a simple lesson that every forward is taught. If strikers didn’t entice their opponents into kicking them in the wrong areas of the field it would be easy to be a defender. We would all be one.

Contrary to the speculation at the time, Hoddle did not tell me to go down if I was nudged in the penalty area. A theory grew up that the England manager was telling his players to fall over at the slightest provocation. There was no such instruction to me. I like to maintain that on a football pitch I’m as honest as they come. But I still insist that forcing a penalty is a skill, distinct from cheating. If you asked him privately, Hoddle might say that he developed a more complex view of the issue when he was playing abroad with Monaco. There aren’t many people who would fly into the penalty area, absorb a daft challenge from a defender and then struggle to remain upright against all the physical odds. The alternative is to be the beneficiary of the defender’s error. You’ve got to win games. This is our living. If you asked 98 per cent of the English population, they would say I was right to go down in St Etienne. They might modify that opinion long after the game is over, but at the time you can bet they were screaming for the penalty.