5 English Footballers Whose Careers Were Wrecked By Injuries

5. Michael Owen

In fairness to the other entries on this list and to Owen himself, his career was as much derailed by transfers as it was by the numerous injuries he sustained. He made his first-team debut at the end of the 1996/97 season away to Wimbledon, coming off the bench to score, and in every season from 1997/98 until his departure, Owen was Liverpool's top scorer despite regularly suffering from hamstring injuries. During this time he helped his club to a cup treble and even won the Ballon D'Or in 2001, beating off competition from the likes of Raúl and Totti. Perhaps most famously, he scored a fabulous solo goal against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup. In 2004, Owen was shipped off to Real Madrid for an astonishingly low (by today's standards at least) £8 million plus Antonio Núñez. Both players lasted only a season at their new clubs, with Owen moving to Newcastle United for double what Real paid for him. Less than half-way through the 2005-06 season he suffered a broken metatarsal, which kept him sidelined for much of the rest of the campaign. Unfortunately for Newcastle and England supporters, this was the first in a series of setbacks that included a stomach-turning anterior cruciate ligament injury sustained in the first minute of England's 2006 World Cup match against Sweden. A double hernia operation, bout of mumps (among other strains and knocks) and relegation later, Owen surprisingly signed for Manchester United on a pay-as-you-play basis in 2009. He was employed mostly as a substitute, and, seemingly vindicating the type of contract he was given, suffered an injury in the 2010 League Cup Final (in which he scored) that kept him out for the rest of the season. In 2012 Owen signed a one-year deal with Stoke City, and it didn't take long before he was sidelined with a hamstring injury. In a silver lining around the cloud of his later career, he managed to score one goal for the Potters, taking his Premier League tally to 150 goals in total. At the end of the 2012/13 season, Owen retired from the game. Of all the players on this list, Owen is arguably the most talked-about with regards to how much England missed his influence - specifically, his movement, pace, and - crucially - goals.