Michael Owen

“I feel that every time I get the ball at the moment I am going to score.”

“My kids are one, three, five and eight, and we are all horsey. The kids have got their ponies and can ride. Our foundation mare is special to our hearts. She was one of my first ever horses. She was my first ever winner at Chester, which is also special, and she's just the apple of our eyes, really.”

“As a youngster, I was considered exceptional, and in many ways that was to my detriment.”

“As I've got older, I've become more intrigued about formations, tactics, I listen a lot more to the manager's team talk; as a kid, if I'm honest, I never listened.”

“I was born to score goals, I feel. How I score them - how I get the ball into the back of the net - might have changed. The actual ability of what I was born to do will never leave me.”

“I've always wanted to be a top footballer since I was young.”

“I was proper, proper fast at one point, and obviously I'm not now, so I've lost certain things, but when I was that fast I didn't need to do certain other things in a game. It was such a potent weapon.”

“If you look at football over the last 50 years there has been a gradual decrease in goals, you don't see too many 10-nils these days, but two, three or four goals per game is a good spectacle.”

“To breed a winner, let alone at Royal Ascot, is unbelievable. I've got four children and they all love the mother. We pat it most days and she's a lovely mare.”

“Game by game is how I judge myself. At the end of the season, yeah, I do look back and think about how many games I've been available for, how many goals I've scored, how I've contributed. But that's what the summer's for. For now, you just look to the next one.”

“Horses will never be my career. It's just a big passion of mine, and one that will always be there in the background, but football is my main passion and everyone knows that.”

“I would like to think that if I stop playing in three, four, five years time, whatever it may be, that I would still be involved in football and still have that as my profession. It is my passion and what I know.”

“I don't feel pressure going into games.”

“You learn to understand it, but if you step back, you do think it is either strange or unfair. But I know that if you don't score, play well or win, you are wrong to have a helicopter and fly home each week to see your kids. You are wrong to have a business outside of football.”

“At 18 to 20, I was probably one of the quickest things around, at the peak of my powers.”

“The difference with football is you're out on the pitch, you feel as though you can do something about it, or score a goal. But when that horse goes down to post as an owner you have no involvement whatsoever. It's a lonely old place in the stand. It's just down to man and beast.”

“I think England are probably not as streetwise as plenty of other teams. The other top teams know how to keep a victory or do certain things to hang on to leads or get back in games. They're a lot more streetwise than us. I think as a nation we are very honest, we try to win the right way.”

“I don't set myself targets. Last season I scored hat-trick against Wolfsburg and three days later, that was forgotten, you're about to be judged again. When you've done well, you don't want another game, you just want to feel great. When you've done badly, you can't wait for another chance to come.”

“You're obviously conscious of being brash or big-headed but I always knew I was going to be a footballer when I was seven or eight. I didn't just think I wanted to be one, I knew I was going to be one. Nothing ever surprised me really.”

“When you're a kid you just think about where you are going to be to put yourself in a position for the next scoring chance. But as you develop, you start to do things that may not catch the eye of the normal football watcher, the dropping back, the closing down.”