Despite his many successes as a footballer, Michael Owen does not shirk from the reality of his career's unsatisfying arc.
The Premier League's joint top-scorer in his first two full seasons as a professional, his breakthrough performance at the 1998 World Cup in France assured the 18-year-old striker a sort of global renown that would never leave him.
Averaging a little over one goal every two games during his eight seasons with Liverpool, a 2004 move to Real Madrid, followed by a quick return to England via Newcastle United, made for a second act that scarcely resembled his stellar opening.
Despite winning a Premier League title with Manchester United in 2011, at 31 years of age, he was already in the throes of a steady decline; it was now 10 years since he had been named England's fourth recipient of the Ballon d'Or award.
In an interview with Off the Ball to mark the release of his autobiography, Reboot, Owen honed in on the milestones he had set at an unimaginably young age.
"There's probably nobody in the world who's had an introduction to football like me," he explained.
"Golden boot winner at 17, coming back from the World Cup having scored a famous goal at 18, and then Golden boot winner again at 18 - it had never happened to anyone."
It is a fascinating quirk of the English striker's character, however, that such landmarks rarely appeared to upset his rhythm.
"I've naturally got quite a lot of self-belief," admitted Owen, "because of what I was as a young kid and being better than a lot of other kids.
"But I've certainly got an air around me that is a little bit delusional as well.
"I could be at Anfield as an 18-year-old, someone passes me the ball in the warm-up and it bounces off my knee and I'd be thinking, that's great, I've got my bad touch out of the way.
"I'm going to be man-of-the-match and score a hat-trick now.
"If I killed that same ball dead, I'd be thinking I'm going to be man-of-the-match and score a hat-trick.
"No matter what you threw at me, that's how I felt. I remain like that to this day."
An outlook that brought him to the top of world football by his early 20s, you can watch back Michael Owen's interview in its entirety here.
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