Jamie Carragher names 'baby-faced' Liverpool hero as dirtiest he's every played with
Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher admits the dirtiest player he played with was 'baby-faced' Michael Owen
Jerry Lawton
Jamie Carragher has revealed the dirtiest footballer he ever played with was baby-faced striker Michael Owen.
Carragher said his fellow Liverpool legend and TV football pundit was secretly a hardman who shocked team mates by making some of the worst tackles he has ever seen in the game.
Owen, who shot to stardom after scoring on his Liverpool debut aged 17, was often described as looking like a 'choirboy'.
Fellow members of the youth team thought he was a posh boy from Chester - until he started hacking opponents down.
Carragher, 42, said the teen striker's agent told him he had to stop making horrific tackles and 'topping people all over the pitch' in order to preserve his squeaky clean image.
(Image: The People)
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The defender first became aware of Owen, 40, who scored 40 goals for England, when he was drafted into the Liverpool youth team two years ahead of anyone else.
Speaking on the Quickly Kevin podcast he said Owen scored a hat-trick against arch rivals Manchester United.
"It was like, 'who is this kid, he's like s*** off a shovel'. He was so quick,'' Carragher said.
"But that Liverpool youth team was a tasty team in terms of physicality.
"I mean some of the tackles we did and got away with, but then Michael turned up and it was like 'oh my god'.
"We were all like from the back streets of Liverpool and this kid from Chester has come in and you should have seen the tackles he was doing.
"He was just topping people all over the pitch, oh my God.
"And if you remember when he first got in the Liverpool team he was like that.''
Carragher said Owen 'put his foot in' on United first time goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel and followed it up with a two-footed tackle on Everton defender David Weir.
"Honest to God, I've never seen anything like it,'' said Carragher.
Owen and Carragher went on to become firm friends (Image: GETTY)
"And I think one of his agents must have said, 'listen, you've got an image you've got to play up to you can't be doing this'.
"And he stopped tackling. He didn't do any of those bad tackles any more.''
Carragher said Owen, who played 89 times for England, was so good at 16 he was the one player he saw at that age he was certain would go on to be a star.
"He was the only player I can ever say who was a guarantee. Michael was the only one you knew was going to be a superstar,'' he added.