Michael Owen has said he made a mistake leaving Liverpool for Real Madrid and revealed the lengths he went to try and secure a return to Anfield.
The former England striker found the back of the net over 150 times for Reds before he decided to join the Spanish giants in August 2004 for £8 million with midfielder Antonio Nunez heading in the opposite direction.
Owen's stay in Spain only lasted 12 months and he was desperate to make a return to his boyhood club.
"At every stage -- every summer -- I was on the phone to Carra [Jamie Carragher] telling him to find a way to get me back," Owen says in the recently published book, "Ring of Fire."
"'Does Rafa [Benitez] want me?' I'd say. 'Does Kenny [Dalglish] want me? Does Brendan [Rodgers] want me?' It was circumstance that stopped it happening.
"Whenever I was available, Liverpool had too many strikers. And when Liverpool wanted me, I was injured. By the end, I wasn't the player I had been before and they simply didn't fancy me. I wasn't good enough."
A return to Liverpool never materialised and instead he headed up north to join Newcastle United in the summer of 2005.
But after their relegation from the Premier League in 2009, he was still keen on a move back to Merseyside. However, then-manager Rafa Benitez did not want to sign him and Owen then opted to join Liverpool's arch rivals, Manchester United.
"I spoke to Carra and tried to get Benitez to do something," Owen added. "I wanted to try to put it right somehow.
"When it became clear Benitez didn't want to do a deal, I spoke again with [Alex] Ferguson. He was very positive about me. I was 29 years old. Should I have decided to retire there and then?"
Owen only managed five Premier League goals in his three years at Old Trafford before he moved to Stoke City until his retirement from football in 2013.