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How wily Owen outfoxed Arsenal Posted: Thursday December 27, 2001 10:55 AM
LONDON (Reuters) -- Normally the most obliging of goalscorers, Michael Owen was severely testing his French manager's faith in Cardiff on May 12. With 13 minutes remaining of the first FA Cup final to be played outside England, Liverpool trailed 1-0 to Arsenal and down on the touchline in the cavernous Millennium Stadium, Gerard Houllier was torn. Should he substitute the strangely anonymous Owen, supposedly Liverpool's best striker, with his rival Robbie Fowler to play alongside Emile Heskey? Or should he take off a midfielder and play all three strikers in a nakedly desperate attempt to force an equalizer -- something he had been loathe to do all season? Amid the hubbub at the home of Welsh rugby, Houllier bravely plumped for the latter course, and fortune rewarded the Frenchman. The arrival of Fowler had an invigorating effect on Owen, who despite all his past scoring feats for England and Liverpool seemed to have frozen in his first major Cup final. Like a long-shaken bottle of champagne, the 21-year-old suddenly exploded into life and two vintage finishes left Arsenal drowning their sorrows. After 83 minutes Owen pounced acrobatically to crack a loose ball in the penalty area into the net with his right foot for Liverpool's equalizer. Five minutes later, England's finest delivered the coup de grace for his manager, racing clear of a tiring Arsenal rearguard before squeezing an improbable shot with his weaker left foot across the body of Arsenal goalkeeper David Seaman into the corner of the net. Cue bedlam as the resonant, bowl-shaped arena suddenly became a stadium of two halves. At one end 30,000 screaming Scousers, 11 men in shorts and one thoroughly vindicated Frenchman in a suit were going bananas.
"I never felt such excitement," said Owen. "I wanted to go through the crowd and hug every Liverpool fan." At the other end, the Arsenal hordes were smothered by a blanket of silent disbelief, struck dumb by Owen's audacity. Their own French manager, Arsene Wenger, and his players looked justifiably horrified and Thierry Henry had more reason than most to look sheepish. The gifted French striker had squandered three clearcut opportunities to add to Freddie Ljungberg's 72nd-minute goal and complete a comfortable Arsenal win. Proven matchwinnerLater the defeat prompted Henry's self-deprecating observation that Arsenal needed to find themselves "a fox in the box" -- a natural goaltaker, rather than a goalmaker as he considered himself to be. Houllier effectively made the same point when he said: "Michael was outstanding in terms of his finishing" -- the inference being that his striker did nothing the whole match except score twice. Owen's belated intervention not only won the FA Cup for Liverpool for the first time since 1992, it also restored some long overdue romance to an occasion which had started to become a little bit predictable. The 2-1 victory marked the first time that both sides had managed to score in the final of the soccer world's oldest knockout competition since 1993. It also was the most dramatic finish to a final since Alan Sunderland gleefully gave Arsenal their see-saw 3-2 victory over Manchester United in 1979. Above all, Owen's out-of-nowhere double was decisive proof, as Houllier eventually concluded, that there is no substitute for a proven matchwinner.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. |
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