Mention Bayern and Bowen will be smiling

MARK Bowen and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer are hardly what you would call football bedfellows.

One was a gritty, robust defender who carved out a career at provincial clubs such as Norwich City and Charlton Athletic; the other a baby-faced assassin and the one-time golden boy of Old Trafford.

But Blackburn Rovers' new assistant manager and the injury stricken Manchester United star have rather more in common than first meets the eye.

For both men, the mere mention of Bayern Munich brings a rosy hue to their faces.

Solskjaer, of course, has been dining out for the last five years on the goal he scored against Bayern in the Champions League final of 1999, which enabled United to complete a remarkable treble.

But Bowen actually performed a similar feat six years earlier as Norwich etched their own place in history with an even more unlikely victory in Bayern's awe inspiring Olympic Stadium.

The date was October 19, 1993, and unfashionable Norwich, who were then managed by Mike Walker, had drawn the German giants in the second round of the UEFA Cup.

Few gave the unfancied Canaries a hope of progressing to the next round as they headed to Munich for the first leg.

Bayern's team, after all, was packed with world-class internationals and their captain, Lothar Matthaus, was widely regarded as the greatest player on the planet.

But the drama that subsequently unfolded must surely rank as one of the greatest shocks in English football.

Jeremy Goss stunned the Germans with a thumping 20-yard volley as Norwich roared into a 1-0 lead.

Then the little Norfolk club found themselves in football Utopia when Bowen stole in like a thief in the night to head home Ian Crook's free kick to make it 2-0 midway through an amazing first half.

Suddenly, Bayern were reeling and though they pulled a goal back through Valencia, they couldn't prevent Norwich from becoming the first English side to beat them on home soil.

"I remember the game going well for us. We went 2-0 up and seemed to be battering them at the time," recalled Bowen.

"Then Bayern nicked a goal back, which made it 2-1, but we managed to hold on and then took them back to our place for the home leg which finished 1-1.

"They scored early but Jeremy Goss then got one of his special goals and we managed to get through on aggregate in the end."

Sadly, Norwich's European adventure finally ground to a halt at the hands of Inter Milan and Dennis Bergkamp, but Bowen's place in Norwich folklore was already assured thanks to his heroics on that unforgettable night in Germany.

Now the affable Welshman hopes he and Mark Hughes can bring similar success to Blackburn, where the pair have teamed up in a managerial capacity after quitting their jobs with Wales.

The two go back a long way, having first met whilst playing for Wales Schoolboys as teenagers.

In the intervening years, their friendship has blossomed to such an extent that Bowen is now Hughes's most trusted lieutenant.

Both had shared a keen interest in the coaching side of the game so when Hughes was appointed as the Wales manager in 1999, it wasn't long before he invited Bowen to join the set-up, too, first with the Under 21s, then as part of his senior backroom team.

"Some people say I'm lucky that Mark Hughes is my mate and my reply to that is 'yes, of course I was lucky because he gave me my first step on the ladder'," admitted Bowen, who holds UEFA A, B and pro-licence coaching badges.

"But anyone who knows Mark knows that he doesn't suffer fools gladly and the very fact that I've been working with him for five years now, on and off, must mean I'm doing something right."

Hughes and Bowen certainly formed an impressive alliance during their time in charge of the Welsh national side.

Wales were going through the worst run in their history when Hughes assumed control five years ago.

Star players like Manchester United's Ryan Giggs were reluctant to turn out for their country and the national team regularly played to audiences of less than 10,000.

But all that changed under the new regime as Hughes dragged Welsh football kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.

Results on the pitch improved over time, to the point that Wales came within a whisker of reaching the finals of Euro 2004, only to see their hopes dashed in a controversial play-off decider with Russia.

Even more importantly, Hughes also managed to reignite a nation's passion for the game.

That, above all else, is probably his most enduring legacy but there were still those who chose to attack his record last week when his five year reign came to a disappointing end with back-to-back defeats against England and Poland.

"You tend to find the people who are dishing out the stick are the ones who either haven't been there and done it, or who had the chance to do it and dropped out along the wayside," said Bowen, who won a total of 41 caps for his country.

"It makes me laugh because here is a fella who gave 20 years as a player to the Welsh cause and five years as a manager, in which he has totally transformed the whole set-up.

"But the odd game then comes around and people tend to forget that very, very quickly."

Now Hughes and Bowen are trying to engineer a similar transformation at Rovers.

The duo have already revolutionised the training regime at Brockhall, where ProZone, a video-based coaching tool, and ice-baths are now part of the weekly routine.

That meticulous attention to detail forms a major part of Hughes's philosophy and it's hopefully the vehicle on which a Rovers revival can be based.

"The simple philosophy with Mark is he wants his teams coming out of a game on a Saturday without any excuses," explained Bowen.

"He wants his players to be able to sit down on a Saturday night at five o'clock and say if things didn't go well 'it's because of me' and not because they weren't prepared right, or because they didn't know the opposition or their own jobs well enough."

Bowen's playing career began at Tottenham, for whom he made 21 appearances before joining Norwich in a £90,000 deal in 1987.

He was a virtual ever present at Carrow Road over the next nine years and his stay coincided with one of the greatest spells in the club's history, the Canaries only finishing outside the top eight in the Premiership on two occasions.

From there, he went to West Ham for a year, then on to Japan, where he played for Shimizu Pulse, who were managed by his friend and former colleague, Ossie Ardiles.

Charlton Athletic was Bowen's next port of call and he helped them back into the Premiership via the play-offs before a groin injury ended up keeping him out for nine months.

It was then that he first became interested in coaching and when he finally hung up his boots after a spell with Wigan Athletic, he was invited to join Steve Bruce's backroom staff at Crystal Palace.

From there, the pair went to Birmingham City and they led the Blues into the Premiership, successfully establishing them as a top-flight force.

However, their relationship ended acrimoniously last summer, much to Bowen's dismay.

"To this day, I don't know why that happened but let's just say I was very, very disappointed at the time," said Bowen.

But now he's back in the Premiership - and back in tandem with his old sparring partner.

"I'd love to say our careers have followed the same paths but I didn't get anywhere near the heights that Mark reached as a player."

Hopefully, as manager and assistant at Rovers, their careers will soar together.