Michael Owen has admitted he found it difficult watching his former Liverpool team-mates lift the Champions League trophy in 2005.
Owen came through Liverpool's youth system, signing his first professional contract with the club in 1996 before going on to win multiple cups with the Reds in the early noughties.
He joined Real Madrid in the summer of 2004 in a bid to take his career to the next level, but instead watched on with "mixed emotions" as Liverpoolwere crowned European Champions 12 months later.
Owen had endured a difficult first season in Madrid and eventually sealed a move back to the Premier League with Newcastle, while in his absence long-time friends Jamier Carragher and Steven Gerrard were tasting European glory.
“I watched it in my living room in Madrid,” Owen told Carragher’s The Greatest Game podcast. “I’m not going to lie, I had massive mixed emotions – me you and Stevie had grown up together.
“So to see your mates not only being happy but paying such a huge role in doing it, that was great.
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“But of course as you said, I left Liverpool, not because I disliked Liverpool, for a quick new experience, a quick fling, and that has happened while I have been away, I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ You can’t not have mixed emotions about it.”
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