Michael Owen might be the fourth-highest scorer in England history, but Sunday's omission from the England squad has left him in the international wilderness.
Owen was left out by coach Fabio Capello last month, with the Italian citing his lack of match fitness as the reason, but that's not the case this time around, with the Newcastle striker starting the last five Premier League games.
Capello has hinted that he prefers to pick players who provide more to the team than just goals and, in last month's win over Croatia, Capello went with Emile Heskey, whose ratio is just five goals in 48 games. But the Wigan striker occupied the Croatia back line to allow Wayne Rooney and hat-trick hero Theo Walcott to run riot.
Instead, Capello has recalled Peter Crouch—showing there can be a way back into his favour—along with Jermain Defoe, Heskey, and Rooney as the four front runners for the World Cup qualifiers with Kazakhstan and Belarus.
Rooney was a lock for the 23-man squad and Crouch and Heskey do offer different options to Owen, but Defoe is a goal scorer from the same mould as Owen. Many pundits believed the soccer odds were stacked in favour of Owen getting the nod over the Portsmouth striker.
It will certainly be a hard decision to swallow for Owen, who has netted three times in four games for the struggling Magpies.
The 28-year-old has an incredible scoring record for the Three Lions with 40 goals in 89 international appearances and just nine behind Bobby Charlton—England's all-time leading scorer—but he has had just a single 45-minute run-out in Paris since Capello took up the reins at the turn of the year.
It's hard to think what more Owen could have done in the last month or so and it appears he has paid the penalty for Newcastle's turbulent start to the season.
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