{"id":7258,"date":"2025-09-08T07:30:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T07:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/7258\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T07:30:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T07:30:06","slug":"wayne-rooney-and-michael-owen-on-who-was-better-aged-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/7258\/","title":{"rendered":"Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen on who was better aged 17"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who was better at the age of 17 – Michael Owen or Wayne Rooney?<\/p>\n

It’s a debate that’s been sweeping social media during the past week after Owen backed himself against his former England team-mate.<\/p>\n

Now Rooney has had his say – and he’s been diplomatic.<\/p>\n

“Michael and I are very different players,” he said on the latest episode of The Wayne Rooney Show, which you can now listen to on BBC Sounds.<\/p>\n

“I used to go out on the street and pretend to be Michael Owen – even though he played for Liverpool.”<\/p>\n

The debate began when former Liverpool and England striker Owen said on a recent Rio Ferdinand podcast: “I saw Wazza got asked who was the best out of us at the age of 17 or 18. And I did smile.”<\/p>\n

After being asked how he compared to other players at the same age, Owen said: “The only person you could possibly compare me to in our country is Wayne Rooney.”<\/p>\n

On Friday, BBC Match of the Day’s X account asked – who was better aged 17, Michael Owen or Wayne Rooney?, external<\/a><\/p>\n

And Owen replied claiming that he was.<\/p>\n

Rooney, who is six years younger than Owen, said: “I think his comments are fair. Of course, he’s going to back himself. I’d back myself. <\/p>\n

“But, I’d never judge myself against Michael Owen because he’s someone I actually looked up to and had the pleasure of playing alongside [for England and Manchester United].”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who was better at the age of 17 – Michael Owen or Wayne Rooney? It’s a debate that’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-7258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}