00:00From Michael Owen's quiet fall from Ballon d'Or winner to a bench roll at Stoke,
00:04to Mario Balotelli wasting generational talent,
00:07to Paul Gascoigne's devastating battle with addiction,
00:10football has seen brutal declines.
00:12Keep watching for the legendary winger who sabotaged his own club's relegation match,
00:16just to trigger a multi-million dollar insurance payout on his career.
00:20Here's the thing about Michael Owen.
00:22At his peak, he wasn't just good, he was the best in Europe.
00:25In 2001, Owen was the recipient of the Ballon d'Or.
00:28He was 21 years old, England had its golden boy, Liverpool had its focal point,
00:33and the whole country believed they were watching the early chapters of an all-time great.
00:38And then, almost in slow motion, it all just unwound.
00:42He first suffered a torn hamstring at the age of 19,
00:45forcing him to spend five months on the sidelines,
00:47and a series of similar injuries seriously affected the second half of his career.
00:52Because everything Owen did, every goal, every run, every reason he won that Ballon d'Or,
00:57was built entirely on speed.
00:59As good as Owen was during his heyday, his game was not exactly sophisticated.
01:04He relied on speed and a predatory scoring instinct.
01:07Take the speed away, and you've taken everything.
01:10Michael Owen has said that injuries had left him petrified,
01:13and made him hate playing football toward the end of his career.
01:16I was petrified of running into a channel.
01:18I just knew I was going to tear a muscle.
01:20The worst thing about it is your instinct, is to do what you have done all your life.
01:25But you start thinking, oh no, don't.
01:27And yet the clubs kept signing him.
01:29Real Madrid, Newcastle, Manchester United.
01:32Each move came with the hope that maybe this time Owen would rediscover the version of himself
01:36that had tormented Argentina at 18,
01:38and destroyed Germany in Munich with a hat-trick.
01:41Owen had scored a stunning hat-trick in a 5-1 victory for Sven Göran Eriksson's side in Munich.
01:47His performances for club and country, seeing him named as the European Footballer of the Year.
01:51That Munich night was the ceiling, and it came at 21.
01:54Everything after was gravity.
01:56The Real Madrid chapter is where the slow fade became visible to the whole world.
02:01It was obvious that Owen's career took a dip when he left Liverpool to join Real Madrid's Galacticos,
02:06where he scored pretty regularly coming off the bench.
02:09Coming off the bench, at Real Madrid.
02:12For a player who'd just won the Ballon d'Or,
02:15and Owen sometimes drew criticism from fans and the Spanish press for his lack of form.
02:20He was a Galactico in name only,
02:23carrying the weight of a reputation his body could no longer back up night after night.
02:27The Newcastle move is where it got genuinely sad.
02:30Owen joined a club to play with a pal who left,
02:33and Newcastle got a highly paid star who spent most of the time injured.
02:37Then came the move that fractured every remaining connection with the fans who had loved him most.
02:43Having left the club on a free transfer amid their drop into the second tier,
02:47Owen's career was at a crossroads,
02:49and it was his next move that severed his ties with Liverpool supporters forevermore.
02:55The England international signed for arch-rivals Manchester United on a Bosman,
03:00where he spent three seasons largely amongst the substitutes.
03:03Three seasons, largely amongst the substitutes,
03:06at Old Trafford, with his name on the back of a red shirt.
03:10The former England striker confesses he felt embarrassed by how significantly his standard had deteriorated
03:17in the second half of his playing days for the likes of Newcastle and Manchester United,
03:22acknowledging it was killing him inside.
03:24Owen is the only England player to have scored in four major tournaments,
03:29despite making his last appearance for his country at age 28.
03:33He finished his career with a single-season spell at Stoke
03:37that delivered just one goal and eight substitute appearances,
03:40coming off the bench in his final fixture against Southampton before retirement in 2013.
03:46One goal, eight substitute appearances,
03:50at Stoke City, for a man who won the Ballon d'Or.
03:53Level one of the downfall ladder doesn't involve scandal,
03:57no arrest, no controversy.
03:59It's a career that peaked at 21,
04:01and then spent the next decade slowly descending,
04:04with the player himself watching helplessly,
04:07as the distance between who he used to be and who he was becoming grew wider every season.
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