Michael Owen turns 30 tomorrow – a worrying landmark for any
footballer, despite the example of the Peter Pan they call Ryan
Giggs. It is certainly not an age when a World Cup hopeful wants to
be on the bench for his club while younger, ambitious rivals press
their claims for international selection.
Conventional wisdom holds that it is Wayne Rooney and Jermain
Defoe who will keep Owen out of Fabio Capello's squad to travel to
South Africa next summer, but last night, while he kicked nothing
more rewarding than his feet for 45 minutes as a Manchester United substitute, Owen saw
another compelling challenger join the list.
The goal Gabriel Agbonlaor buried for Aston Villa after 20 minutes was his
eighth in 16 Premier League appearances this
season, and those who still doubt whether he can be effective
against top-quality opposition should bear in mind that he has now
scored against United in each of the past four seasons. The
Villans' hero could well be timing his World Cup run to
perfection.
Owen had hoped to start last night, after his hat-trick against
Wolfsburg in midweek. Instead, Sir Alex Ferguson opted to play with
Rooney as a lone striker, with Owen and Dimitar Berbatov on the
bench throughout the first half, after which, in extremis, Owen was
sent on in place of Ryan Giggs and Berbatov took over from Park
Ji-sung.
It was not until the second half, therefore, that there was a
renewal of old acquaintance between Owen and Emile Heskey, who were
England's strikers at the 2002 tournament, in Japan. Seven years
ago, you could have had stratospheric odds against Heskey still
being in situ come 2010, while Owen was deemed a spent force at
international level. But the target man they used to call "Bruno"
is Capello's preference as he contemplates his squad for South
Africa.
The two players are chalk and cheese, of course, and comparing
them is akin to weighing a Jaguar against a Range Rover. Both can
motor and get the job done, but we are talking about very different
sorts of performance.
After his Champions League exploits last Tuesday, a media
bandwagon is starting to roll for Owen again, but if the arch
predator is to persuade a sceptical Capello to give him the chance
to add to his 40 international goals, he needs to be playing, and
scoring regularly at club level. To his understandable frustration,
he has started only three Premier League matches this season.
Heskey, in contrast, has been an automatic selection under
Capello, and can confidently expect to add to his 56 caps, despite
the fact that they have brought just seven international goals. For
a long time he has been a starter for England, but only a
substitute for Villa, where the manager, Martin O'Neill, preferred
John Carew. For the past three games, however, Heskey has been in
the original line-up. The leopard, though, will not change his
spots. Thirty-two next month, Heskey is not about to become a
latter-day Jimmy Greaves overnight, and 21 appearances for club and
country this season have brought him just two goals.
Midway through the second half, typically, he shot tantalisingly
wide from right to left – the story of his career – and after 73
minutes of honest toil but precious little by way of threat to
Tomasz Kuszczak in the United goal, he gave way to Carew.
Can England afford to allocate one of the key striking positions
to such a blunt instrument? Capello clearly thinks so. Against
United, as is his wont, Heskey did his best work linking the play
in midfield, and was content to leave it to a pair of much younger
England wannabes, Ashley Young and Agbonlahor, to plunder United's
below-strength defence for the all-important first goal, which saw
Young outmanoeuvre the stand-in right-back, Darren Fletcher, with
ease.
In the second half, with Owen partnering Rooney, there were
echoes of another international tournament, the 2004 European
Championship, which could have had a much more positive outcome for
Sven-Goran Eriksson and his team but for the broken metatarsal that
put Rooney out for the duration after Owen had given England the
lead against Portugal. The two of them were bright and lively in
combination here, but Villa defended assiduously to keep them at
bay.
It never looked like being United's night, nor this time was it
Michael Owen's. Young Gabriel, on the other hand, left with a huge
smile on that angelic face.