For most parents, watching their child win five domestic titles, two Champions Leagues and playing in a World Cup would be beyond their wildest dreams.
Owen Hargreaves lived out this dream, winning trophies for two of the world’s biggest clubs in Manchester United and Bayern Munich, while earning 42 England caps during his career.
And while his parents will no doubt be proud of everything that Owen accomplished, his father had one small niggle.
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Owen Hargreaves’ Bolton regret
Owen was famously born in Canada to a Welsh mother and English father and would opt to choose his dad’s nationality when it came to international football and was handed an England debut by Sven-Goran Eriksson in 2001, despite never having lived in the country.
His dad, Colin, had played youth football for Bolton Wanderers and then for Calgary Kickers after emigrating to Canada with his wife Margaret at the start of the 1980s.
Despite moving across the Atlantic, Colin remained a huge Bolton fan – so was he disappointed that his son never played for the Trotters?
“Yeah, Bolton was his team growing up, and they still are today,” Hargreaves told FourFourTwo, speaking on behalf of TNT Sports. “He used to say to me when I was a kid that I would be playing for Wanderers one day.
“But then it got to a stage pretty quickly where he could see that I was capable of playing a whole different category of football – no disrespect to Bolton, of course.
“My first team was Bayern Munich and I was playing in Champions League finals for them, and at World Cups with England.
“I would love to have done it, though, and maybe I could have given it a go near the end of my career had my body held out a little better.
“But my dad is so proud of everything I achieved in my football career. I think he’ll live with the fact that I was never a Trotter.”
