by Peter Crouch
I was lucky that my obsession was football and that football can reward you as it has me. I could have been obsessed by dinosaurs and ended up as a palaeontologist. It might have been Dungeons and Dragons, which may have made it harder for me to meet the woman who is now my wife. But the thing I loved most became my life, and it was the best life. It happened to pay me well, yet I would have done it for free.
There was a point playing for England when I was first given the number nine shirt. My dad and I, even with all that had gone before, realised what this meant. We thought about how many kids of all ages dream of playing for England, and what a miniscule percentage ever get to do so. You think how many of those wanted to play up front, and how many dreamed of wearing the number nine shirt. And I thought: on this particular day, I’ve got the shirt that millions of boys and girls want. That made me understand how significant it was. I scored for England with ‘9’ on my back. I’d made it.
I thought about the sacrifices I made early on. I didn’t go to a single house party in my teens. I didn’t mess about in the park after dark. As we grew older and mates started going to festivals, I stayed at home. I didn’t even risk the illicit thrills of the Ealing Jazz Festival. Once I made it into the Premier League, I made up for it a little. I found my relaxation level. I found a balance that worked.
There were sliding doors moments. The constant abuse from the terraces in my early days left me asking myself if I could really put myself through it. I remember crying in front of my dad: why do I look like this? Why can’t I be normal? So many doubts, so many fears. And then coming on for QPR at Gillingham and miskicking a volley, hearing a groan from the crowd, before steadying myself and lashing it in. Climbing high to set up the equaliser a few minutes later. Hitting the ground running at Portsmouth, stepping up to Aston Villa and dying inside again.
In my home debut in the Premier League I looked down the other end at Alan Shearer and it hit me: I’m a million miles away from that standard. I remember looking at my strike partner Dion Dublin and knowing I wasn’t fit to play off him. Getting my confidence back up on loan at Norwich, moving to Southampton and crashing straight back down again: James Beattie leaving for Everton and me still not getting a game, Dexter Blackstock and Leon Best starting ahead of me. It took Harry Redknapp coming in to get me and Kevin Phillips together and the goals to start flowing. Eight months later I was at Liverpool as an England player. What if Saints chairman Rupert Lowe had decided to give Steve Wigley more time before sacking him? What if Harry had fancied someone else instead?
My whole world changed at Liverpool. I had been playing well at Southampton, scoring goals, getting in the newspapers. When you play for Liverpool everyone in the country knows you. It was all a high – scoring at Anfield and en route to the Champions League final, riding high with the best Portsmouth side of all time, the Champions League again under Harry and Spurs. At Stoke we finished in the top ten of the Premier League three seasons on the trot. Right at the end, Burnley gave me a new lease of life. I loved it there. My regret is that I couldn’t show them what I could do.
I wouldn’t change much. It was all new and I was naïve. Success can seem a million miles away, and then you roll the dice, land on a square with a ladder rather than snake and you’re away. If you’re smart you appreciate how fortunate you are. Football, I realised early on, is a ruthless business. Clubs will spit you out in seconds. You can be unlucky with one injury and they’ll still bin you off.
It got worse as I grew older, and so many could see the rewards that were there for the chosen few. I saw average players earning millions. I saw players who didn’t care about the clubs that were responsible for making them rich. I haven’t missed that side of the game – the selfishness, the nastiness. I’ve met some of my best friends through football and I’ve met some where it’s almost impossible to accurately describe how big a fool they are. In no other walk of life can you get away with it. In football, you do a job on the pitch and people will turn a blind eye to your behaviour off it. They’ll praise you and encourage you. Then there are the ones who don’t even possess the ability to get away with it who still behave appallingly. I’ve sat on team buses listening to players who have done nothing in the game, loudly talking about the things Sergio Agüero apparently doesn’t do well. They would say, without apparent irony, that he doesn’t work hard enough. I’d sometimes turn round incredulously and say, excuse me? You are talking about Agüero, when you’ve played ten Premier League games and he’s scored more goals for Manchester City than any other player in history? Perhaps cut him some slack, yeah?
I made a conscious decision never to be bitter old pro. There were plenty around as I came through into the pro ranks, stuck in their ways, resentful of everything that was new. I tried to embrace the future as much as possible. I still struggled with the direction some parts of the game were going. I basically had fewer and fewer friends every year. I ended up being mates with more of the backroom staff – the physios, the doctors, the assistant coaches. I’d sit and chat to them, it gradually dawning on me that they were far closer to my age and background than the lads coming through. We’d arrive at a stadium to play a game, and I’d mention playing there before. The young player next to me would point out that he’d been minus two years old at that point. That hurt.
Even as I look forward, there are a few lingering regrets. Leaving Liverpool when I did, not realising that Fernando Torres would soon be sold and that I could have been a regular once again. There is no bigger club than Liverpool. The whole city is electric, drenched in football the same way as I am. I would have loved to play for them for ten years rather than three and a half. What happened at Stoke: going from a team with some ability and great lads to the opposite, bad characters and not much more ability. That was the saddest thing for me. Going to Burnley reminded me of Stoke at the start, in the good years – good players who were better than they were being given credit for, a hard-working manager getting the best out of his team.
There were players at Stoke who took the club down from the Premier League. I was there, and so I must share some of the blame, but the lack of care from some for the owners, the supporters and the staff was a disgrace. Joe Allen cared, Jack Butland and Charlie Adam cared. Mame Diouf was a great character. Joe even signed new four-year contract after we went down. He was the only one in the entire squad who played every single Championship game that first season, a Premier League player fighting with all he had just to get a club to sixteenth in the second tier.
I had moments that I will never forget, little personal prizes that I will always hold close. Scoring 100 Premier League goals. Making my England debut, and not becoming a one-cap wonder. Getting the record for most headed goals in the Premier League, being pretty confident it won’t be broken, not with the way football is now played. Scoring for England at a rate that many more celebrated players did not match. Proving people wrong – proving that I could play, that I could volley, that I could spin and turn, that I could score with overhead kicks. Fitting in, after all those adolescent fears. Fitting in at World Cups and in the Champions League.
I met my heroes: Luca Vialli, Chris Waddle, the original Ronaldo, fat and glorious on an Ibizan beach. I lifted the FA Cup with Robbie Fowler, I played golf with Marco van Basten. My dad got to meet Peter Osgood, after years of making me watch the 1971 Cup final again and again. I never met Diego Maradona and I’ve yet to shake Paul Gascoigne’s hand. Maybe the time has gone. But I did the Robot in front of the future king of England. Maybe that was better.
When I was at Villa I looked up to the older established stars. David Ginola, Paul Merson, Dion Dublin. As a youngster I looked up to tall players who could still had ability – Tore André Flo at Chelsea, Niall Quinn. Even van Basten was six foot two. Now I’ve had young players come up to me and say they used to watch me. A couple of tall, slim lads have even said I’ve helped them, because they’ve been compared to me. That feels good.
I didn’t set out
to be liked. I’ve never faked anything. I just tried to be who I am. I felt lucky to be where I was, tried as hard as I could and attempted to enjoy myself doing it. Maybe you can relate to that. If you were given the chance, you’d do the same: relish every day, give absolutely everything you had. I don’t think I’ve done anything out of the ordinary.
I do wonder which team my kids will support. They’ve been bought QPR shirts, Spurs kits, Liverpool and England. They’ll be so confused. I love the idea of taking them back to all of my old clubs and saying, Daddy played here, you know? Maybe they can take their dad away to European games. We’ll do Loftus Road as our lovely bread and butter.
When I walk down the street, I try to have time for people. You will always piss some people off. There’s always someone who hates you. But I’m glad the majority don’t seem to. When I saw players treating others with a complete lack of respect I hated the game. To see it happening around the training ground was staggering. We are all working for the same club and the same aims. We are in this together – secretary, cleaner, groundsman, player.
We had a player at Stoke who was wonderfully talented but just couldn’t care. We would see him hammering through the 50mph speed restrictions on the M6 in his chauffeur-driven car and try to tell him – mate, you’re 30mph over the limit, you’re going to get speeding fines every day. He would shrug. I’ve got a driver. We would say, yeah, but your driver will get done. He’ll be skint. He might lose his licence. The player would shrug again. Ah, but I do not care for him. That became our go-to phrase for the footballer who has lost his senses. ‘I do not care for him.’
I was always a fan first. I remember what it did for me meeting Justin Channing. I remember the Panini stickers and obsessing over the cool shirts and staring out at the outline of Wembley across the North Circular from Ealing and wishing I could just watch a game there, let alone play in one, let alone score for my country. I never even thought about robotic dancing for Mickey Rourke or being teased by Prince Harry about my ability to attract Abbey Clancy or standing in front of 3,000 people at my own festival as they sang, to the tune of ‘Let It Be’, ‘Peter Crouch, Peter Crouch, Peter Crouch, Peter Crouch … There will be a podcast, Peter Crouch …’
This chapter has come to an end. I’m ready for the next one. I’ve still got a smile on my face as I get out of bed every day. Something wonderful is over but something great is about to begin.
1. Football is a serious business at all times.
2. When I tell people that I once had a night out in Brighton dressed as a chicken, and that I popped in to the local branch of Toni and Guy to get my feathers trimmed, they have sometimes accused me of exaggerating, as if the idea of a 6’7” chicken is somehow weird.
3. A magnificent welcome in Burnley. A local butcher also gave me my own sausage, which was less painful than it sounds.
4. This fella tweeted that if he could have my shirt, he would do the whole away trip in Speedos and a snorkle. Here I am giving him his reward.
5. They say never meet your heroes. They have clearly never met former QPR defender Justin Channing. I couldn’t believe he was real. I couldn’t believe he was wearing jeans – at this stage I thought all footballers wore full kit seven days a week.
6. Showing Fabio Capello my right-arm off-spin.
7. You didn’t argue with Fabio, even when it came to a sport he’d never heard of.
8. Rudi Voller reaches back into his magnificent permed thatch to discover Frank Rijkaard has £lobbed in it. An awful moment for any player, and one guaranteed to lead to fisticuffs.
9. ‘No, I’m not sure why I’m on this pitch with you either.’
10. When I found out about Gareth Bale’s magic beans, it blew my mind and changed my world.
11. I could out-jump him even if I couldn’t quite out-pace him; one ‘out’ out of two isn’t bad.
12. Jermain and I had a prolific record playing together from U21 days to England, Portsmouth and Spurs, although I’m sure
13. He could have passed a few more times!
14. Courtney Pitt and I were very much style icons across the wider Portsmouth area in the early part of this century. Here I model the nipple-level single button look, which I still maintain is the only way to wear a denim jacket.
15. I originally asked for the England shellsuit top at Christmas 1990. At the age of thirty-eight, BT Sport finally made my dream come true. The twenty-nine intervening years had done nothing to damp down my excitement; bat-wing was everything I hoped it would be.
16. Jeff Winter and Mike Dean, two referees born for the stage. There is a reason why you don’t see kids in the park in replica referee’s kit.
18. Play to the whistle, they always say. Here I’m simply appealing for the whistle so we can all get on and play.
19. After I scored against Arsenal from a corner, Arsene Wenger described me as a ‘basketball player’. In that case, this was a three-pointer.
20. Two of the finest penalty-takers of all time. Every man has a default place to put a pen. The best just have more defaults.
22. The phrase ‘og’ initially confused me. Had legendary Coventry goalkeeper Steve Ogrizovic gone up for a corner and stuck one away?
23. It astonishes non-footballers how little actual footballers carry with them. Here I am sporting the latest designer luggage from the Parisian fashion house G’Arbage.
24. Tackling is part of the game … unfortunately.
25. You put the luminous subs’ bib over your choice of wet-top or big coat. It gets stuck on the hood or caught up at the back,
26. You look like a hunchback or a tortoise. You look like you can’t even dress yourself.
27. Loved this day. Pepe, Robbie and I are certainly not hungover here at all. Two of the greatest characters I’ve ever played with.
29. The fab four, or at least the quite good quartet: me, Steve Sidwell, Glenn Johnson and Sean Davis. Very, very close to the dream night out. Not very close to the dream fourball.
30. Andy Cole scored more Premier League goals than me. Les Ferdinand regularly used to out-jump me when we went for headers at Spurs training. Both were polite enough not to mention these facts when I interviewed them for my new Amazon show.
31. My last game in football! Nice to be able to spend it with my beautiful kids Sophia, Liberty and Johnny. Sophia was actually trying to get Aubameyang’s shirt in this snap.
32. Possibly my favourite non-footballing moment. Singing live at the 02 with Kasabian. A quiet, sober, low-key affair.
33. Which one is the Iniesta? Thanks to my podcast, I am now best friends with both, so I’m not really bothered.
34. I arrived at Crouchfest fearing no one was going to turn up. Then Torn, Chris and I spotted 2,600 half-cut fans of the podcast. And Liarn Gallagher. And Katherine Jenkins. I love doing the podcast as much as I can’t stand Karl.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Tom Fordyce, without whose help I would not have a book, let alone two. Or a podcast, come to think of it. Perish the thought.
Thanks to Andrew Goodfellow, Clare Bullock, Lydia Ramah, Becky Hibbert, Emma Finnigan and all the brilliant team at Ebury, who have done such a great job.
As I’m now retired from football, I’d also like to thank a few people who believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself: my mum and dad, Des Bulpin, Andy Campbell, Mr Wareing and everyone at Stellar.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
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Copyright © Peter Crouch 2019
Cover design by Two Associates Peter Crouch has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Ebury Press in 2019
penguin.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 9781473569157