[photo by michael kjaer]

• by Tim Conlon, writing from Cooper City, FL

What if I told you that one of the top 2 greatest soccer players of all times was born with no legs? For centuries many kinfolk have been trying to figure exactly what the famous Nostradamus was talking about when he said, “A man that no one will give a chance, will become soccer royalty.” Is it possible that we are witnessing this man in our lifetime? I’ll leave that decision to you.

On a cold winter day in 1979, December 14th to be exact, in the English town of Chester a very special baby was born. I say special because this baby was born with no legs, and this baby's name was Michael Owen. In his early life Michael's parents believed that he was just going to be another disabled child that they would have to assist for their entire lives. Then one day while Michael's parents were having a party, he crawled out the front door to the local carpenter and said, “Sir, can you please make me some legs." This may seem normal to some people but Michael was only 4 months old. From that moment on Michael began playing the sport that he called soccer.

Many scholars debate on who officially coined the term soccer,  but all of us gurus know Michael came up with it in 1982 when he said what is now England's most famous line, “Soccer the game of men, the game of greatness, the game of me”. Most would expect Michael to have had trouble in his beginning stages of learning how to use his legs but no, from the second that carpenter made Michael that wooden pair of legs he started running and playing soccer, and he played damn good. Michael was so good that at one point while playing school yard soccer the principal would actually punish him if he didn’t play against the other kids with just one leg. This was something players around the world would come to wish had never happened because now Michael could beat all his competition with just one leg attached.

I could bore you with how Michael won the 1993 NCAA Heisman Trophy even though he never played a down of football in his life, or how he was the first person to celebrate by using a fist pump, seen used by Tiger Woods or even his days at Liverpool, but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to tell you about his time at Newcastle United where I first started covering him. I realized there was something very special about this man when using Newcastle in FIFA on Xbox. Michael could out-run every person on the pitch and sometimes if you knew the right buttons to push in the game he would actually take one of his legs off and swing it at the ball as if he were playing croquet. This game and this alone was the reason Michael Owen is now a part of Manchester United. Before he left Newcastle the people were so grateful for his time that his number 10 was retired throughout the entire city, I mean literally even in children’s school.

Follow Tim on Twitter @TConlon2

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