Displaying rapid pace and composed finishing, he progressed through the Liverpool youth team and scored on his Premier League debut in May 1997, becoming the club's youngest goalscorer, at 17 years, 143 days.

After Liverpool had fallen behind their title rivals under Gérard Houllier's final two seasons, Owen opted not to renew his contract and then moved to Real Madrid for £8 million in the summer of 2004.

Occasionally playing as captain, he is England's 11th-most-capped player and has scored a former national record (since overtaken by Wayne Rooney) of 26 competitive goals, with 40 in total from 89 appearances, most recently in 2008.

[16] A boyhood Everton fan,[17] Owen attended Rector Drew Primary School in Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales and by the age of ten, some of the nation's leading scouts were monitoring his progress.

[20] Owen turned out for the youth team of Mold Alexandra,[16] playing with the under-10s at the age of eight after a local physical education teacher, Howard Roberts, persuaded the league to allow an under-age player.

[24] Ted Powell, the championship-winning coach of the England under-18 side, declared Owen to be the best of a generation of young players that included Paul Scholes, David Beckham and Robbie Fowler.

"[26] Owen, who had come on as a substitute in the second half, "[breathed] new life into the Reds' championship corpse," and "began [Liverpool's] best spell of the night",[26] but was ultimately not able to salvage a win.

[27] Owen recorded many personal feats during the season and helped Liverpool challenge for the league championship, but ultimately a run of bad form in February saw the club bowing out of the title race.

Owen retained the Premier League Golden Boot in 1998–99 despite incurring a hamstring injury against Leeds United that prematurely brought his season to an end on 12 April.

A successful return to action with the England squad in October 2004 seemed to revive his morale however, and in the first following match, he scored his first goal for the club, the winner in a 1–0 Champions League victory over Dynamo Kyiv.

As the 2006 World Cup was less than a year away, Owen wanted to get more playing time to secure his position as the first-choice striker in the England squad and joined Newcastle amid rumours that he had inserted an escape clause valued at £12 million.

A damaged anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his right knee, sustained in the first minute of the group match against Sweden at the 2006 FIFA World Cup, kept Owen out of regular football for nearly a year, until April 2007.

Under the existing insurance arrangements between club and country, FIFA and the FA had been paying £50,000 of Owen's £110,000 weekly wages since he suffered the injury, totalling approximately £2 million for the time he was out of action.

[81] He made his comeback from injury on 10 April 2007 in a 4–1 behind-closed-doors friendly against Gretna, scoring after ten minutes and then setting up fellow striker Shola Ameobi before coming off an hour later.

[84] On 9 May 2007, Newcastle chairman Freddy Shepherd reacted angrily to reports that Owen could move on to another club at the end of the 2006–07 season due to a release clause in his contract.

[91] Newcastle manager Sam Allardyce said that Owen was likely to miss the start of the forthcoming Premier League season due to the injury which "doesn't look as encouraging as we first thought".

[95] In late September 2007, after an encouraging start to the season playing for both Newcastle and England, it was reported that he would urgently require an operation for a double hernia and would likely be out of action for at least a month.

This reignited the "club or country" row, with then Newcastle manager Sam Allardyce voicing his disappointment that Owen was risked in a low-key friendly game against Austria.

Michael's alleged refusal to play in this run including a crucial home against Fulham ([104] proved costly, as on the final day of the season on 24 May 2009, Newcastle were relegated from the Premier League for the first time in 15 years.

The shirt had previously been worn by many of United's other illustrious players over the years, including Johnny Berry, George Best, Steve Coppell, Bryan Robson, Eric Cantona and David Beckham.

[113] On 20 September, Owen scored his first goal at Old Trafford, in the sixth minute of stoppage time against local rivals Manchester City to give United a 4–3 derby win.

[118] Owen scored his first goal for United back from injury in a 7–1 pre-season victory against a League of Ireland XI on 4 August 2010 at the newly built Aviva Stadium.

The second goal came on the half-hour mark, when he met Mame Biram Diouf's cross with instant control, before firing a right foot shot into the top.

[128] Owen started in United's home Champions League group stage match against Oțelul Galați on 2 November, however he was substituted early in the first half when he pulled up with a thigh injury; this was his last appearance for the team.

He is sixth in the list of all-time top scorers for the England team, behind Harry Kane (61), Wayne Rooney (53), Bobby Charlton (49), Gary Lineker (48) and Jimmy Greaves (44).

After playing only 51 seconds of his third appearance of the tournament, and 80th cap, in the final group game against Sweden, Owen badly twisted his right knee and was forced to leave the match on a stretcher.

[155] A scan of the injury on 21 June confirmed that Owen had torn the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his knee, and was sent home, no longer able to play in the tournament.

[165] In his prime, Owen was highly regarded for his great pace,[166] opportunism[167] and agility,[168] as well as his technical ability and his eye for goal,[167][168] which enabled him to be considered one of the greatest English and Premier League strikers of his generation.

[178] After Owen returned to the UK to play for Newcastle, he travelled to a nearby BAE Systems facility on a daily basis in order to fly, by helicopter, to train with his club.

[197] Following this, in June 2022 Owen was found to have breached UK laws regarding gambling advertising, as he had used his Twitter account to promote an unlicenced cryptocurrency casino to the British public.