In 2004, Michael Owen announced that he wouldn’t be renewing his Liverpool contract, so instead of losing him for nothing, we sold him on the cheap to Real Madrid.
A 24-year-old with a Balon d’Or under his belt left for roughly £8m plus Antonio Nunez.
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In 2004/05 we won the Champions League, of course, which made Owen’s decision look a little silly, but the fact he did that to us and went on to play for Manchester United means there’s little warm feeling about the striker.
However, he does make a sensible point about Emre Can, who looks set to depart on a Bosman at the end of this term.
“Is he going to get better than Liverpool though?” Owen told BT Sport, cited by The Sport Review.
“When you run your contract down, you normally leave for a bigger club.”
Juventus want the German, but they’re probably the biggest club interested.
Yes they win Serie A regularly and appear in the Champions League, but they don’t pay wages like Liverpool – and we doubt their contract offer will be too much bigger than ours.
Still, it’s Can prerogative. Better players than him have left us in the past and better ones will arrive. We’d still like him to put pen to paper, but just cannot now see it happening.