Michael Owen

Four of his planets sit in earth signs and one in water, with three in fire and two in air. Earth builds and keeps; the element that would register the emotional weather of a dressing room is nearly absent. Owen scored a goal against Argentina at eighteen that made his name, and won the Ballon d'Or in 2001, so the public part of the story arrived early and the rest of the career was played out behind it.

The Sun sits at twenty two degrees of Sagittarius with Mercury and Neptune in the sign as well. Sagittarius runs at the thing and assumes the gap will be there when it arrives, which is what a striker's whole job consists of. The Moon answers from Libra, which weighs and would rather not commit, and that pairing describes somebody decisive in the one place it counts and considerably less so everywhere else.

Mars sits conjunct Jupiter at two fifths of a degree inside a second group in Virgo that also holds Saturn. Drive fused with scale, in the sign that attends to the exact detail and under the eye of the planet of limits, is a serviceable chart for an athlete whose gift was precise timing rather than power. Not one of the ten planets was retrograde at his birth, so nothing here is reviewing itself.

On 26 September 2015 Jupiter stood again on its birth degree in Virgo, when he was thirty five. Virgo inspects rather than expands, and what it asks of the planet of reach is whether the thing holds up to examination rather than how far it went. For a career defined by a handful of seasons at the very top, that is the harder question of the two available. Three circuits lie behind that date, and the goal that made his name was scored inside the second of them, before he was twenty.