Kobbie Mainoo: England's Next Unlikely Hero?
Sixty years on from Wembley, England are still chasing the echo of Geoff Hurst.
Back in 1966, Hurst was not supposed to be the man of the hour. Jimmy Greaves, the natural goalscorer, the darling of a generation, started that World Cup as England’s first-choice centre-forward. Hurst was the understudy, waiting, watching, hoping. Then came the twist football so often delivers: Greaves’ injury opened a door. Hurst walked through it and straight into immortality, hitting a hat-trick against West Germany under the twin towers and etching his name into English sporting folklore.
Supporters spilled onto the pitch before the referee finally called time – “it’s all over” – and England’s one and only World Cup triumph was sealed. No England side has matched that achievement since. No Englishman has repeated Hurst’s feat in a major final. The West Ham striker became the template for the unlikely hero.
That is the context Owen sees when he looks at Kobbie Mainoo.
The former England forward, now a UK ambassador for Casino.org, was asked by GOAL whether he feels any sympathy for the young midfielder, who has watched on at times while England have searched for control in the middle of the park. Owen didn’t hesitate.
“I do a little bit,” he admitted. “Because I think he's definitely got the ability to play a role in the World Cup. And who knows? Things change, you get unlikely heroes.”
Hurst is the reference point. The conversation quickly circles back to that summer when a squad player stepped out of the shadows and changed history.
“Our greatest moment ever in this country, winning the World Cup, who would have thought Geoff Hurst would have been playing?” Owen said. “Jimmy Greaves was the best thing since sliced bread. My dad just raves about Jimmy Greaves. When anyone's talking about the best England XI and things like that, my dad's like, ‘Jimmy Greaves’ straight away. He was insanely good. Now, things happen, and all of a sudden, Geoff Hurst plays, and look what happens.”
That is the romantic thread Owen tugs at with Mainoo. The idea that tournaments are not won solely by the headline acts, but by those who seize a moment that was never meant to be theirs.
“There will be, or there could be, a surprise. And it could be Mainoo, you can't switch off,” he said.
Owen’s wider point, though, is about England’s path and the standards they should be setting. He is blunt about the level of opposition faced so far and how the narrative around those games has been shaped.
“Really, what we've done so far, if we had been knocked out, there would have been a huge inquest,” he said. “I mean, nobody should be really in our league.
“We've built it up as if Mexico was the hardest game of all time, but come on. Norway, if we played Norway at a neutral ground, let's say we play Norway in Spain tomorrow, people would expect us to beat them two or 3-0. So when you look back, we should be beating every single team.”
Expectation, then, is not the enemy; complacency is. In Owen’s eyes, England have simply done what a squad of this quality ought to do. The real examination, he insists, starts now.
“This [Argentina] is now the first game, this is a proper game, this is one that is a toss of a coin, this is one that's going to challenge us,” he said. “But everything so far has been what you would expect from England, surely.”
This is the stage on which reputations harden or crack. The kind of match where a tight midfield, a calm pass, a run from deep can tilt the whole narrative of a tournament. The kind of night that once turned Hurst from backup to legend.
“We will see,” Owen added. “But if we're going to win it, there are going to be so many twists and turns and so many heroes that we won't even be thinking at the moment. And Mainoo could be one of them.”
England’s history says it only takes one opening. The question now is whether another understudy is ready to step through it.
