Six years have passed since former England national striker Michael Owen hung up the football shoes on the shelf. Now he is up to date with an autobiography that has created headlines on the British Isles after an excerpt was published in the Daily Mirror magazine.

The book shows, among other things, that Owen canceled his move to Newcastle from Spanish giant Real Madrid in 2005, which he believes was a step down in his career.

The victory ended in the worst way - with the relegation to The Championship after a nightmare season in the Premier League. Owen later felt that he had to take on an unreasonably large amount of debt and that club icon Alan Shearer, who at the time had recently quit his playing career and temporarily took over Newcastle as a new manager, did not take responsibility for the failure.

"Be furious with me"

"He was picked up at St James' Park as a savior ... it could have been a fantastic story. But he failed. Newcastle United went out ... rather than looking more closely at their own shortcomings, it was easier to blame Michael Owen, "Owen writes in his autobiography and continues:

“It wasn't until three months later that I discovered that Alan was apparently furious with me. Not only that, it turned out that he was telling anyone who listened to what he liked about me ”.

When Alan Shearer shared the excerpt, he replied by posting on his Twitter account a video in which Michael Owen says that at the end of his career he "hated" playing football and that he just "wanted to post the last six-seven years ".

"Yes, Michael, we also wanted that when you made £ 120,000 (equivalent to $ 1.3 million at today's exchange rate) this week," Shearer writes alongside the video.

Question the loyalty

Owens response to the former national striker? A questioning of Newcastle legend's loyalty.

"I remember you were close to signing for Liverpool after Sir Bobby Robson (former manager of Newcastle) put you on the bench. You did everything to get out of there, ”replies Owen on Twitter.

He adds briefly that it is probably best to read the book in its entirety so that extracts are not taken out of context.

“My book has created lots of headlines this morning but they have to be put into their context. I have been silent for many years when I received a lot of criticism. As soon as you read the book you can form your own opinion ”.