In the mind's eye Michael Owen remains the enchanted sprite who flitted through the Argentina defence on that ultimately disappointing night in Saint-Etienne eight years ago, leaving Roberto Ayala and every other spectator in the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard open-mouthed as, at 18 years of age, he announced the arrival of a world-class talent. "He was a boy then but by the time he came home he was a man," Diego Maradona said recently.
But at 26, now a father and an owner of land and racehorses, Owen can no longer play quite that role for England. He is a stockier figure, his musculature enhanced by gym work in order to safeguard his once fragile hamstrings from further damage, and the edge has gone from his pace. There have been disappointments unimaginable to the teenager on that evening in Saint-Etienne: not just the injuries that have studded his career but the discovery that a new regime at Liverpool, the club where he thought he would spend his entire career, no longer considered him indispensable, followed by summary rejection after only a single season with Real Madrid.
His acceptance of a move to Newcastle United last summer seemed, in the light of his enduring fondness for his old Anfield home, like another reverse, for all its financial dividends. And it was followed, on New Year's Eve at White Hart Lane, by a collision with his England team-mate Paul Robinson which led to two surgical interventions. Since that day he has played only 29 minutes of competitive football, against Birmingham City in April, although in recent weeks his gradual return to fitness has been almost completely eclipsed by the saga of Wayne Rooney's metatarsal.
Even with 77 caps and 26 goals, Owen is no longer the talismanic figure he once was within the England camp. That role passed to Rooney two years ago in Portugal and now there is an even younger candidate in the shape of Theo Walcott. As he watched the 17-year-old during England's training sessions at SV Bühlertal's Mittelbergstadion this week, Owen must have sensed that what he was looking at, barring the intervention of fate, was his own eventual replacement.
Owen has been a discreet but influential presence in those sessions, a reminder that four years ago on the South Korean honeymoon island of Jeju he stepped up from the role of vice-captain to assume the temporary leadership of the squad while David Beckham recovered from his broken foot. He rose to the task but already he was nostalgic for the time, at his first World Cup, when no one knew what to expect from him. "You weren't under any pressure," he said. "You go to your first World Cup and you've got the advantage of no one knowing you. Being 18, you're not scared of anything -- you don't even think of anything, you just go out and do it."
Four years and 30 caps later the expectations were very different. "There were advantages then and there are different advantages now. I'm four years older, wiser, more experienced. Maybe the disadvantage is that people have watched me play a little bit more but just because they've watched you doesn't mean they'll be able to stop you. You have to find other ways of trying to beat them."
He was, he said then, a better all-round player than in 1998 and he had the still fresh memory of a marvellous hat-trick against Germany in Munich, the first of his two under Sven-Goran Eriksson, to back up the claim. "I'm better in the air, better with my left foot, better at volleying, better at holding the ball up," he said.
A further four years on from that statement, however, it would be much harder for anyone to claim an equivalent improvement on his behalf. The second half of his career now looks very much like a matter of preserving his fitness and managing the inevitable erosion of his footballing faculties as effectively as possible in order to safeguard the instinct that leads him into the areas where the knock-downs and through-balls go.
Against Hungary 11 days ago his wan performance was that of a man coming back from injury and struggling to regain his touch. Against Jamaica four days later, however, he was given the space in which to meet a long ball from Rio Ferdinand and scored a simple goal that seemed to transform his mood. For the final hour of that match he involved himself in virtually every move, linking play cleverly and contributing the pass from which Peter Crouch scored the final goal.
"Michael wanted to show himself, myself and the coaches that he's ready for the World Cup," a relieved Eriksson said afterwards. "His performance was much, much better. He made the right movements, with a lot of runs into space behind the full-backs, and he fought for the ball in the air, even though he doesn't win many up there. I think it was quite a different Michael Owen compared to four days earlier. The goal will help his confidence but he believes in himself. I think Michael knows his body and he's always calculating, 'The World Cup is close, I will show who Michael Owen is.'"
And if Owen needed any further encouragement before embarking on his third World Cup, there was an endorsement from an unexpected source. "I first became aware of him when he scored that great goal against my country in 1998," Maradona said after a charity match in Newcastle last month. "I've watched his career closely and I've been impressed with him. It's a shame he was injured last season but I'm certain he'll be one of the stars of the World Cup. If he's on form, then I'm sure England can do well."
