Ouch. We’re not sure Michael Owen deserved this.
We don’t know what’s going with the current hostilities between pundits and football folk, but it’s certainly on the rise. As ever more ex-players join the television fraternity, and therefore become media ‘personalities’ in their own right, so they become viable and very obvious targets for footballers/managers who take exception to their views.
There’s been Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville double-teaming Loris Karius, Pep Guardiola expressing cutting ignorance of Stan Collymore, and now Jose Mourinho has decided to have a pop at BT Sport’s most vanilla and inoffensive pundit, Michael Owen.
The Manchester United manager took exception to Owen’s perceived criticism of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and decided to compare the enigmatic Swede’s record at Old Trafford to that of the former United and Liverpool striker.
“‘Zlatan will score more goals in one season than Michael Owen in three seasons at Man United,” jibed Jose. “He [Owen] scored 17 goals in three seasons, Zlatan is almost there in six months, so he’s not a bad choice for us.” Ibrahimovic has already scored 13 goals in just 23 games.
Responding to the barb, Owen was incredulous and joked about how managers these days were “awfully touchy”. His fellow studio pseud Ian Wright came to his colleague’s defence, suggesting Owen should just go home and polish the Ballon d’Or he won back in 2001…
"My #MUFC goals were better value than Zlatan's." @themichaelowen gets his right of reply to Jose Mourinho… https://t.co/B20m3PUzrn
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) December 13, 2016
https://twitter.com/Lloydie84/status/808797468171366400
