Michael Owen said Tony Pulis' training sessions at Stoke made him retire | OneFootball

Michael Owen’s playing career sadly ended with a bit of a whimper.

The 2001 Ballon d’Or winner was simply unplayable in his younger days at Liverpool, terrifying defences with his pace and clinical finishing.

In 297 games across all competitions representing the Reds, Owen scored 158 goals and he won the coveted Premier League Golden Boot award in both 1997/98 and 1998/99.

The 42-year-old was also brilliant on international duty with England for many years after making his debut at the age of just 18.

Owen scored 40 goals in 89 games and had injuries not taken their toll, he would likely have finished as the country’s record scorer.

But it just wasn’t to be and from around 2006 onwards, Owen just wasn’t anywhere near the same devastating player he’d been at the start of his professional career.

A number of serious injuries hampered the striker’s spells at Newcastle United, Manchester United and Stoke City, which resulted in him retiring in 2013 at the age of just 33.

And according to the man himself, part of the reason why he called time on his playing days rather prematurely was due to Tony Pulis’ dull training sessions at Stoke.

Owen made the confession back in 2015 when he was a guest on BT Sport’s programme Fletch & Sav.

He even labelled Pulis’ training sessions as “boring, mind numbing”…

Video: Owen on Pulis’ training sessions at Stoke

The striker-turned-pundit said: “Every day is the same. It’s just 11v11 constantly, for like an hour.

“I hated training. That finished me off, that place. I said to Tony Pulis them training sessions and that in general, it’s so mind numbing for the players that aren’t playing.

“For the players that aren’t playing, sort of being the statues basically while he [Pulis] works on on the XI.”

Ouch. Owen was not a fan of Pulis’ methods and that probably wasn’t helped by the fact that he made just nine appearances for Stoke in total, scoring a solitary goal.

Pulis’ training sessions clearly worked for a time, as he kept the club in the Premier League for a number of seasons, but he and Stoke eventually parted ways by mutual consent at the end of the 2012/13 campaign due to a lack of progress.

Maybe Owen should given Mark Hughes’ training sessions a go before retiring…

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