Kobbie Mainoo: Could He Be England's Next World Cup Hero?
Sixty years on from England’s greatest day, the story that still echoes loudest is of a man who was never meant to be the hero.
Geoff Hurst began the 1966 World Cup as a back-up. Jimmy Greaves, the phenomenon of his generation, was the one the country trusted to deliver. Greaves led the line, the natural choice, the superstar. Then came injury. Misfortune for one, a door flung open for another.
Hurst walked through it and straight into history.
His hat-trick against West Germany at Wembley, the ball crashing off the crossbar and over the line, fans spilling on to the pitch before it was “all over” – that single afternoon turned a West Ham striker into an immortal. No England team has matched that feat since. No one has come close to that kind of transformative moment on home soil.
That is the backdrop Owen reaches for when he looks at Kobbie Mainoo and the questions around England’s midfield control.
The former England forward, now a UK ambassador for Casino.org, spoke to GOAL about the teenager’s role and the possibility of another unlikely hero emerging on the biggest stage. He sees the pattern. He’s lived the pressure. And he knows how quickly a World Cup can twist.
“I do a little bit,” Owen said when asked if he feels for Mainoo, as England search for more control in the middle of the pitch. “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.”
His mind goes straight back to 1966.
“Our greatest moment ever in this country, winning the World Cup, who would have thought Geoff Hurst would have been playing? 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.”
The point is clear: status means nothing when a tournament starts to bend. Opportunity often lands at the feet of the player nobody had at the top of the depth chart a month earlier.
“There will be, or there could be, a surprise. And it could be Mainoo, you can't switch off,” Owen continued. “Really, what we've done so far, if we had been knocked out, there would have been a huge inquest. I mean, nobody should be really in our league.”
England’s path so far, he argues, has been framed as a gauntlet when, in his eyes, it should have been routine.
“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.”
Then comes the gear change. The comfort zone ends. Reality bites.
“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. But everything so far has been what you would expect from England, surely.”
The narrative shifts from expectation to jeopardy. From cruise control to coin flip. This is where tournaments are really decided – not just by the stars everyone knows, but by the names that suddenly catch fire.
“We will see,” Owen said, “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.”
Sixty years ago, a reserve striker stepped out of the shadows and rewrote England’s history. The question now is simple: in a World Cup that always finds new protagonists, is Kobbie Mainoo waiting for his own Wembley moment?
