Owen Hargreaves is coming home, albeit to a home where he never lived! Much has been made of Hargreaves' Bolton roots when, in fact, he's the only member of the family not born in the UK.
His mother Margaret was born in Wales. So too was his eldest brother Darren.
Dad Colin and other sibling Neil are of Lancashire stock while Owen was born in Calgary, Canada on January 20, 1981.
Colin played for Bolton's youth team before his work took him to North America, initially to Toronto and then to Calgary.
Wanderers wanted to sign Darren, a promising teenage striker who represented Canada at youth level, only for injury to wreck his pro career.
So, it was that basketball playing Owen became the footballing star of the family.
He was recommended to Bayern Munich and at the age of 15 flew to Germany for trials. Cologne and Bayer Leverkusen were also interested but never got a look in. Bayern liked what they saw and signed him in the summer of 1997.
With his multi-national up-bringing and German residency, Hargreaves had the pick of countries to represent internationally.
He chose England and Howard Wilkinson gave him a first England Under-21 cap in August 2000.
Almost 12 months later he made his full debut against Holland and in doing so he became the first England international neither to have lived in England nor to have played club football there.
He made a Bundesliga debut for Bayern in August 2000 and the same season achieved a Champions League triumph over Real Madrid. He and Steve McManaman remain the only two Englishmen to have won a Champions League medal with a non-English side.
Domestic honours followed with Munich but so did some unfortunate injuries, including a broken leg last year.
Hargreaves' selection by England for the 2006 World Cup in Germany wasn't greeted with universal approval.
But he won over the notorious fans to become England's player of the tournament. He was also voted England's player of 2006.
www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk
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