Michael Owen says England’s Golden Generation didn’t miss silverware because of dressing-room tribes or dinner seating, but because of how Sven-Goran Eriksson set the team up on the pitch—and because Glenn Hoddle was controversially dismissed in 1999. The form
Michael Owen remembers the talk—how England’s Golden Generation failed to win anything because of tribal loyalties and who sat where at the table. He doesn’t buy it.
“The problem was not the seating plan in the dining room,” the former England striker says, “but the shape of the team on the pitch.” Owen argues that the real issue was tactics, and that Glenn Hoddle—sacked in 1999 in a controversial exit—would have found answers Sven-Goran Eriksson couldn’t.
The subject is back in the spotlight as Thomas Tuchel’s England prepares for another generation chasing a second star on the jersey in the coming weeks in North America. Owen. now set to be Daily Mail Sport’s exclusive World Cup columnist this summer. believes the current group can learn from the shortcomings of a squad still widely regarded as this country’s finest since 1966.
He points straight to the fracture lines. “It’s funny, because I feel like the last six months, this topic of us players not liking each other has raised its ugly head,” Owen says. He admits he nearly fell off his stool after hearing Rio Ferdinand say he never got on with Steven Gerrard.
Owen can’t help but laugh at how easily it all gets absorbed. “I can’t wait to see Rio or Stevie and ask, ‘Is this real?’” he says. Then he questions his own reaction: “I question my own bloody mind. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, did I have my head up my a***?’”
He insists the idea of him disliking Manchester United players at meals is nonsense. “Now, it’s true to say there was a Manchester United table at meals – no question about it,” Owen says, “But did I dislike any of those people? Absolutely not!”
What, then, stopped England from winning? For Owen, it comes down to what happened against the very best.
“Against the very, very best, we hardly got a kick (under Eriksson),” he says. He recalls England’s Brazil game at the 2002 World Cup—a 2-1 defeat in the quarter-final stage—where he believes the team never really got going after they found themselves playing against 10 men for the last half hour. “We played against 10 men for the last half hour and still didn’t get a kick. Not even a chance.”.
In Owen’s view, the flatness was what hurt most. “It was the most flat effort I’ve ever seen,” he adds, “considering it was a World Cup quarter-final. We just weren’t smart enough.”
He turns to formations and the reality of how you try to break down top-level opposition. “Some people will say it’s nothing to do with formations, it’s just about players,” Owen says. “I really don’t get that.” He describes matches where England struggled to even see a pass because of how their opponents were set up.
Even his own moments carry that same theme. Owen says his goal to put England 1-0 up was “just a hopeful chip forward” and a mistake he “jumped on.” He brings up his Euro 2004 quarter-final goal against Portugal too: he says it was a long ball by David James, flicked on by Portugal’s own player.
“Let’s get it right – we played long ball!” Owen says, explaining that it wasn’t by design. “Not because we wanted to, but because we were so outnumbered in midfield with a rigid 4-4-2.”
He also pushes back on the old insistence that Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard couldn’t play together. “Everyone said Gerrard and Lampard couldn’t play together. It didn’t matter,” Owen says. “All we did, every time we played good teams, honestly, was launch it to (Emile) Heskey.”
That’s where his tone shifts from argument to disbelief. He lists what England and Brazil had on the pitch—names and roles that. to him. show the difference in control. “Brazil’s wing-backs were Cafu and Roberto Carlos – ours were Danny Mills and Ashley Cole,” Owen says. “Their front three was Ronaldinho, Rivaldo, and Ronaldo – we had Owen and Heskey!”.
Owen pauses, almost incredulous at how self-important England had been. “Do you know what I mean? I’m laughing at myself saying this,” he says. “We were so blasé to think we deserved to win, but I do believe we would have had a better chance with Hoddle.”
Then comes his preferred remedy: how England would have looked with Hoddle.
“It seems so simple looking back,” Owen says. “but play the 3-5-2 that Hoddle did in 1998.” He names the centre-halves he believes England had at its disposal during that era: John Terry, Sol Campbell, Rio Ferdinand, Gareth Southgate, Jonathan Woodgate, Jamie Carragher, and Ledley King.
He also sketches a specific shape for Tuchel’s predecessors to have used: “Put Gary Neville on the right. Ashley Cole the left and bring Becks in the middle.” Owen says the key was to “Keep the ball. control games.” He admits it sounds easy now. “It sounds easy now, yet we made bloody hard work of it.”.
Still, Owen’s case isn’t just about tactics. He also believes Hoddle’s overall football brain was underused and underappreciated. “Glenn Hoddle has the most underused, under-appreciated football brain this country has possibly ever had,” Owen says. “I am convinced that if he was the manager of that team – the ‘Golden Generation’ – it would have been a marriage made in heaven. He was just incredible.”.
But Owen concedes that he got life in camp wrong in another way—his own words, his own memory. He says Hoddle’s discipline model was “too big” on rules, and he remembers the atmosphere at France ’98 as miserable.
“You almost feel guilty saying, ‘Oh, it was miserable and boring back in the day,’ because it’s everyone’s dream to play for their country,” Owen says. “But at France ’98, it was so miserable.”
He describes what that meant day to day. Owen says England in 1998 didn’t have mobile phones. that Glenn wasn’t keen on them playing golf. and that they weren’t allowed to see their families. “You’d see them 200 metres away at the top of the stand, and that was it,” he remembers. “There were no newspapers, and no one was watching television.”.
Even the meals had a rigid uniformity. “We all knew we had to eat rice, boiled potatoes, pasta and boiled chicken,” Owen says. “But you weren’t even allowed a bit of bolognese or tomato sauce. Every meal was the same.”
He recalls a banner above the restaurant that read “Chew to Win. ” and the idea behind it—that the more you chew and digest your food. the less energy your blood takes to break it down. “Our French doctor was giving us all these nutrients,” Owen says, “and we were popping pills and taking creatine. We were tuned to the max. That was all well and good, but there was no let-up.”.
For a generation under Tuchel now, Owen’s message is less about piety and more about release. He praises the more relaxed approach that allows family visits and gives players the chance to escape the bubble.
“England will do in Kansas is what you need,” Owen says, referring to an “odd night out to let your hair down.” He adds a boundary: “You aren’t getting drunk, but you’re seeing something different.”
Germany ’06 brought the opposite energy—less discipline, more spectacle. Owen remembers it as a different kind of pressure.
“It was very different to France ’98!” he says. “The mad thing is, when it was available, I wasn’t even that bothered.” He recalls that he “didn’t once go down into the village,” saying he was “still brainwashed” after his France ’98 experience.
But once he thought about where his wife might end up, Owen says he made his feelings clear. He tells the story plainly: “I’d said to my wife. ‘Don’t you dare be pictured dancing on tables!’” He adds that he believes it would have put him off his game. “Thankfully, she was sensible,” Owen says. “I’d told her to avoid the wild crowd.”.
When asked if that meant avoiding the Carraghers, Owen answers: “Exactly!”
That tournament, though, would become Owen’s last. In the first minute of the final group game, his knee buckled and his ACL ruptured.
“To have it taken away from you in an instant, that is hard to take,” Owen says. “Just bang. No warning. Your life turned upside down. I was out for nearly a year.”
He also returns to another memory he doesn’t seek out: the Argentina goal from 1998, when he was 18 and scored in the last 16.
Owen says he has never willingly watched any game that he played in. “The only time I’ve ever seen my Argentina goal is when it is forced upon me,” he says. “I don’t even know if my kids have seen it.”
The reason is simple, and he frames it through the words of Roy Keane. “To quote Roy Keane: it was just my job!” Owen says. He insists he’s fiercely proud of what he achieved, but he describes how the World Cup amplifies everything. “You score against Bournemouth on a Saturday and it’s great. but a goal like that at a World Cup. it changes your life. ” he says. “I went from being a national star to international.”.
As for the goal itself, Owen describes it as instinct and decisiveness. “It was just what I did. I had no other thought but to run at those defenders. No fear of what might not happen,” he says. “I knew what I could do. Once I was in a position to shoot. for me. that clipped finish wasn’t hard – it’s why I wasn’t letting Paul Scholes take it off me!”.
He says that moment still travels with him. “Wherever I travel in the world, people say, ‘I remember exactly where I was when you scored that goal’,” Owen adds. “It was a moment that transcended the globe.”
But the World Cup also means weight. Owen scored a penalty in the shootout against Argentina, yet he says there’s a different pressure when you’re playing for England—because one slip can define you for years.
“When you play for your club, it’s fun,” Owen says. “If you miss a chance, you can go out and score a hat-trick a few days later. But there is no question about it – when you go to a World Cup, you know that one slip can live with you for four years.”
He connects that to the thoughts that invade your mind as you walk towards a penalty spot. Owen says he has taken penalties all through his life and has been nervous before. What he describes is something else entirely. “I’ve never felt what I did when walking towards that spot for England. with the most negative thoughts. ” he says.
He remembers scoring a great goal and still feeling the fear. “I had just scored a great goal, I was on top of the world,” Owen says. “And I’m still thinking. ‘Oh s***. if I miss this. I’m going to be in a pizza advertisement with a paper bag over my head’. That’s not normally me. Playing for England just does something different to you.”.
Owen wants younger players to use that reality rather than run from it. He points to rookies he lists by name—Elliot Anderson, Nico O’Reilly and Marc Guehi—and says they don’t need to fear the pressure so much as treat it as motivation.
“I was still able to say to myself, ‘This is my game and my sport. I’ve practiced all my life. I would love it if 10 billion people tuned in to watch, not just 500 million. I know I can do something special here’,” Owen says.
Then he flips the pressure into a preference about attention. “Put me on a golf tee and I don’t want a single person watching me,” Owen says. “I’d prefer three billion people watching me play football over three people watching me play golf.”
That’s how he says he keeps belief alive. “So in that way, I don’t really believe in the pressure blocking you,” he adds. “What an opportunity these players have now. Embrace it. I wish it was me again. Go and show the world what you can do.”
For Owen, the memories are still sharp and the regrets still linger—but his message to the players of the next England run is clear: the World Cup rewards bravery, and the managers who can seize the moment with the right plan.
The new columnist also points readers to Tuchel’s squad with an exclusive quiz, asking “Which England star has 7 GCSEs?” and “Who has lost half of his finger?” ahead of the competition in the United States.
Michael Owen England World Cup 2026 Thomas Tuchel Glenn Hoddle Sven-Goran Eriksson Rio Ferdinand Steven Gerrard France 1998 Germany 2006 Brazil 2002 WAGs ACL injury Argentina 1998 Steven Gerrard Rio Ferdinand rift