Final call: Owen Hargreaves on the 2001 Champions League triumph
Final call: Owen Hargreaves on the 2001 Champions League triumph May 2001 was a special month: the Bundesliga showdown in Hamburg, the Champions League final in Milan – and right in the thick of it all, a young man from Canada made his breakthrough. A reunion with Owen Hargreaves. Whenever Owen Hargreaves feels a longing for Munich, he simply gets in his car.
He lives just north of London, but after a 45-minute drive he’s in Marylebone, a district in the heart of the city. He knows his way around here. “You absolutely must try the spaghetti over there, and the sandwiches over there,” he says as he strolls through the narrow streets.
People are sitting outside cafés and restaurants, and the evening crowds are slowly starting to gather in the pubs. Marylebone is like a small village in the middle of the big city; life here is more laid-back, he says: “Marylebone always reminds me of Munich. ” Almost 20 years after leaving the club, Hargreaves is still very much a Munich man.
Ten years at FC Bayern clearly left their mark. He's now sitting with a pot of tea, speaking fluently in German about his work. As a TV pundit for the British sports channel TNT, he's in great demand when it comes to explaining what FC Bayern are about.
He says he's often asked, for example, what it feels like to be doused in wheat beer. Hargreaves enjoys talking about the traditions and stories that define FC Bayern. When he wore the red shirt, around the turn of the millennium, tragedies and triumphs were very much intertwined.
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