Owen's sweetest day

Owen (centre) celebrates his winner

By BBC Sport Online's Tom Fordyce

Michael Owen's two goals at the Millennium Stadium mark another milestone in a career that is still in its infancy.

That the cup-winning performance came near the end of a season which has seen his ability questioned will make the moment even sweeter.

After scoring the goal of the tournament at the 1998 World Cup, Owen was feted as the best young striker in the world.

Owen pounces to score his first

But his star had fallen to such an extent by March this year that his manager Gerard Houllier chose not to use him at any stage of the Worthington Cup final, despite Liverpool being held at 1-1 through half an hour of extra-time.

And the talk in the build-up to the FA Cup final was all of Steven Gerrard, Owen's old buddy from his days in the Liverpool youth team.

It was Gerrard who was being talked about as the man to take England forward at international level and Gerrard's goals that were winning big games for the club.

Critics have compared Owen to Arsenal's Thierry Henry - with the Frenchman coming out more favourably.

Owen, it was said, was unable to hold the ball up.

The timing and direction of his runs were naive compared to the way that Henry, a converted winger, would pull wide and find space through the channels.

Fundamental gifts

That Owen's winner came from a classic Henry-style run, wide and into space, is the first irony.

The second is that it was Owen's most fundamental gifts - speed and opportunism - which were behind his two strikes.

Henry had three clear chances and missed them all as his side dominated.

Owen had two chances, one a scrap and the other a desperately difficult one, and took them both.

It is no coincidence that the run of form Owen finds himself in - eight goals in his last four club games - comes at the end of a season when his injury problems have been put behind him.

Half a second later after this, Liverpool led

His development has been delayed by a series of hamstring injuries, in both legs, that began at Leeds in April 1999.

He only returned to training that August and was called in for intensive treatment at Anfield in January 2000 after suffering his fifth hamstring problem in nine months.

For a player previously confident of beating most defenders with sheer pace, it was a difficult period.

With Owen having played in the Premiership for four years, having scored at World Cup finals, European Championships and now the FA Cup final, it's hard to believe that he is still just 21 years old.

He scored on his debut for the Reds at Wimbledon in 1997 after also finding the net on his first appearance at every level he had played - youth, reserve, England schoolboys and England Under-21s.

In February 1998 he became the youngest player of the 20th century to represent England - less than two years after winning the FA Youth cup for Liverpool.

The England call-up was reward for the startling impact he had made in the Premiership after that goal on his Selhurst Park debut.

In his first season he scored 21 goals and bettered that by two in the following campaign.

He has now scored 82 times in 161 games for Liverpool and been on the scoresheet 10 times in 27 England appearances.

But Saturday's goals, he will be the first to admit, were the most important of his career so far.