Group Six Northern Ireland v England: Michael Owen must be the first person to move from Madrid to Newcastle in search of a fiercer heat. The striker has not misunderstood the weather forecast; he has just missed the way in which the emotional temperature of football can rocket in England.
Asked about the criticism of an England side that have won six of their World Cup qualifiers and drawn the other, Owen replied with a eulogy rather than a protest.
"It's great that English football is like this," he said, his appetite whetted by an impending return from suspension for tomorrow's game with Northern Ireland at Windsor Park. "You go on to a pitch and know that every eye is on you. If you make one bad pass you know it is going to be spoken about the next day. There's that intense pressure.
"Moving out to Spain you miss a bit of that. If you wake up in the morning (in England) you switch on the telly and you see the leading scorers' chart and then the page switches over and it's the league table. You're just permanently driving yourself to do better and better. You have that buzz of gritting your teeth to do whatever is needed. Spain was fantastic but it's also a lot more relaxed."
Though he would surely have remained at Real Madrid if a regular slot in the starting line-up had been likely, Owen never gives the impression that he has demoted himself with the £16.5 million switch to Tyneside. His career there is yet to start but as a footballer raised at Liverpool he ought to relish being at another club where the lunatics do not comprise the fringe so much as the very fabric of the fevered crowd at St James' Park.
There is a relief in having clarified his situation. "As soon as the decision is made," he said, "you can start to look ahead, you know what you're going to be doing and where you're going to be living."
The establishment of a routine ought to include a role in the game with Northern Ireland. Though he had no part in Real's opening fixture of the La Liga programme nine days ago, Owen reckons that he featured in eight of Real's friendlies, starting six of them. The expectation is that the training sessions will prove his fitness to play.
There is slightly more mystery about the system in which he is placed. Just before the start of training at Arsenal's complex the coach Steve McClaren laid out the bibs in 4-4-2 formation, a gesture that invited onlookers to decide whether this humorous gesture was bluff or double bluff.
The England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson could easily stick with the 4-3-3 strategy employed in Cardiff, and the fact that it did not work perfectly may give him all the more encouragement to employ it. The side could benefit from the practice if he is in earnest about having that strategy in full working order as an alternative to 4-4-2 at the World Cup finals, if and when they qualify.
Owen understands why Eriksson employed David Beckham in a holding role against Wales. "He's maybe changing it a little bit," said the striker, "just in case we come up against a team like Brazil who try to utilise that space between our defence and midfield."
These, all the same, are rather abstract considerations for a man with a well-honed view of his own purpose. Owen does not waste time on worrying either that, at 5ft 8in (172cm), he will need to stretch himself to be a target man.
"Hopefully that's good," he said of his compact frame, "England have been criticised in the past at tournaments for lumping the ball long. If you play well, it doesn't matter whether you're big or small."
Owen was at ease, except when mention was made of scoring records. The man who has scored 32 goals for England immediately recalled that he had last addressed the subject just before having a cursed night in a 2-0 win over Azerbaijan. No matter what obstacles Northern Ireland present tomorrow, he is granting the fates no excuse to punish him for presumption.
* Guardian Service
