This game gets to them all. Michael Owen was a teenage sensation when he realised that.
His first trip to Old Trafford on Good Friday 1998 was the culmination of a lifetime’s dream. Or, to put it another way, the opportunity to settle a childhood grudge nursed over many years as a schoolboy Liverpool player.
‘When I grew up United were the bee’s knees, they were the team everybody wanted to beat because they were the best, so I had that ingrained fight in me,’ says Owen.
He remembers that breakthrough season, as an 18-year-old, in the run-up to the 1998 World Cup finals, where he would become a global star, the start of a career which would see him win the Ballon d’Or in 2001.