Former Liverpool striker Michael Owen has revealed that his old teammate Jamie Carragher begged him not to leave for Real Madrid back in 2004.
The then-superstar frontman left his beloved Reds for the Spanish heavyweights and has seemingly regretted the switch ever since. However, despite Carragher’s warnings, it was the example of club legend Ian Rush that convinced Owen to go.
“Even though it was Real, it was still hard to do, definitely,” he told talkSPORT. “As soon as I heard of their interest, I was with Jamie Carragher at the time and we both just couldn’t believe it.
“I spent a couple of days thinking shall I or shan’t I, what should I do? It was only Carra I let know and he was saying, ‘don’t go, don’t go’. It was just in the back of my mind that Ian Rush left and did a year at Juventus and then he came back. If I say no, I’m going to think ‘what if’ all my life. I definitely would. I would be sat here telling you, ‘at some point I could have gone to Real Madrid’.”
OPINION
Clearly what Owen is getting at here, and what he has mentioned elsewhere as well, is that he hoped to go to Madrid and eventually secure a move back to Liverpool at some point in the future. Unfortunately for him, it didn’t work out that way. Whether the Reds came in for him after his year in Madrid is unknown, but either way it was Newcastle United who offered the most money and that’s where the Englishman went after his time in the Spanish capital. Obviously he wanted to return to the north west of England rather than the north east, but that’s life, Michael. Perhaps he should have listened to Carragher’s wise words, which proved to be emphatically correct as Owen’s career never reached the epic heights of his days at Anfield. However, there was the enticing example of Rush at the same time, and that’s ultimately what swayed Owen. It’s a shame for him personally that it didn’t work out the way he wanted, but there you go.
