Former England and Liverpool striker Michael Owen has revealed his pick for the best striker to ever play the game.
Owen enjoyed his own goal-laden career, scoring 262 goals for club and country. After breaking into the Liverpool team as a 17-year-old, he became the face of English football, announcing himself on the global stage during the 1998 World Cup in France.
In 2001, off the back of a unique cup treble with Liverpool, the England star was named the first Englishman since Kevin Keegan in 1979 to win the Ballon d’Or, beating a who’s who of incredible strikers — Thierry Henry, Andriy Shevchenko and Francesco Totti.
Speaking in a recent interview, Owen was asked to name the greatest striker of all time and questioned if Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo could really be considered as true strikers before emphatically settling the debate.
“It depends where you place the likes of Messi and Ronaldo, are they strikers, you know, out and out number nines.
But the best striker of all time is R9, Brazilian Ronaldo.”
Ronaldo began his career at in his home country of Brazil at Cruzeiro before exploding onto the European stage with PSV and then Barcelona. After scoring 34 goals in 37 La Liga games at just 19 years of age, “O Fenômeno” (“The Phenomenon”) moved to Inter Milan for a world record transfer fee of £19.5 million.
Injuries disrupted Ronaldo’s five seasons in Milan, but the Brazilian’s rate of goals was still impressive — 49 goals in 68 league games — and earned him a switch to the Galácticos of Real Madrid in 2002, briefly linking up with Owen himself during the 2004–05 season.
An impressive first season in Madrid culminated in Ronaldo’s second Ballon d’Or and set the standard for the rest of time at the club — 104 goals in 177 games. Subsequent moves to AC Milan and back to Brazil with Corinthians saw the striker end his club career with 352 goals in 518 appearances.
Internationally, “R9” scored 62 goals in 98 caps for Brazil, placing him third on the all-time list behind Pelé and Neymar, and his 8 goals at the 2002 World Cup — including two in the final against Germany — won him the Golden Boot.
Ronaldo’s finishing ability, pace and flair redefined the striker role and left a legacy as one of football’s most lethal goal-scorers, which Owen believes gives him the right to stand alone at the very top.
