Wayne Rooney Responds After Michael Owen Claims He Was Better at 17

Michael Owen caused a stir earlier this week when he claimed he was a better player than Wayne Rooney at the age of 17.

A 17-year-old Owen burst onto the scene in 1996 when he scored on his Liverpool debut. Despite his youth, Owen showed no fear and quickly emerged into one of the very best strikers in world football, with his career peaking when he was awarded the Ballon d’Or trophy in 2001.

Unfortunately for Owen, he suffered from numerous injuries which hindered his career and prevented him from going down as one of England’s greatest ever players.

Speaking about his career on Rio Ferdinand Presents, Owen claimed he was the far better than any player in the world at his age group at the beginning of his career. He said: “People will have only seen me or remember me in the later years when I was getting worse and worse. The agony for me is that nobody remembers. Only a few people remember what I was like when I was 10 and 12 and 15 and 18 and maybe up to 22.

“I was past it and on the way down by 21. That’s the agony because was there another 18-year-old that was anywhere near me at 18? I was light years clear of anything in my age group, anything in England. You can bring the next kid and the next kid and the next kid and the next one that scores 10 goals and everybody’s like: ‘Oh, it’s the next Michael Owen’.”

Following those comments, Match of the Day asked football fans on X (formerly Twitter): ‘Who was the better player at the age of 17, Michael Owen or Wayne Rooney?’

That question drew a strong response from Owen. The now 45-year-old – who remains the second-youngest player to ever win the Ballon d’Or – wrote: “At 17 I scored 18 PL goals (winning the Golden Boot), Wazza scored 6. At 18 I again scored 18 goals (again winning the Golden Boot and coming 4th in the Ballon d’Or). Wazza scored nine.

Rooney was very complimentary of his former England and Manchester United teammate when speaking on the latest episode of The Wayne Rooney Show. When asked about the comments, he said:

“But we’re two completely different footballers – different styles, different techniques. Michael Owen, for a three or four-year period, was probably the best centre forward in the world.

“I think people do forget actually how good he was. It’s hard to argue against anyone coming up against Michael Owen then. Unfortunately, he did get his injuries and he probably couldn’t adapt his game maybe as well as I could in playing from the side or going back into midfield.”

He added: “It was an honour for me to play with him. I really did look up to him when I was young and we had very similar pathways in terms of we both come into the England squad quite young and then we played together.

“We probably didn’t get the best out of each other when we did play alongside each other. And, actually, he assisted me, I think, more than I did him, which you’d probably think it should be the other way around.”