I always liked Peter Crouch. He comes across well and was reasonably talented on the pitch. Sure he had that 19 game drought at the start of his LFC career but he always tried hard and soon enough the goals came. I think when he left the club he could hold his head up high (well being him it would be hard not too...) He's 37 now and still playing well albeit as an impact sub but that happens to everyone. Anyway I read this interview The Times put in it's Saturday magazine. He comes across exactly how I imagined he would be. Self deprecating, Funny and smart. Here it is. Enjoy.
First things first: Peter Crouch is incredibly tall. You probably already know this because you’ve seen him playing football, either on the telly or watching from the stands, and he is always, by some stretch, the gangliest presence on any pitch. But observing from a distance doesn’t really do him justice. You’ve got to get up close to fully appreciate the scale and proportions of the man. I am 6ft 2in and not used to feeling short. Crouch is 6ft 7in and rake thin, beyond beanpole, with limbs so long that when he walks towards you, smiling, it looks vaguely uncanny, as if he’s some kind of friendly animatronic being. He’s wearing jeans, a grey sweatshirt and still retains a deep summer tan, even though the football season is now well under way. He folds himself into a chair in the private members’ lounge of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel in London. Members of the public, he says, regularly feel moved to approach him and tell him how tall he is, as though he didn’t already know. “I get that on a daily basis.” He sighs and shakes his head. “A sad state of affairs.”
To combat this he used to carry around a deck of specially printed business cards, which he would hand to smug-looking strangers the moment they approached him at the bar on a night out and began to open their mouths. They would then pause, frown and look down at the card to see that it bore the following five bullet points:
• Yes, I am tall
• Yes, I am 6ft 7in
• No, the weather isn’t different up here
• No, I don’t play basketball
• I’m so glad we had this conversation
With his wife, Abbey Clancy, in London, 2012GETTY IMAGES
Crouch has always been defined by his height. He has also, for the majority of his 21 years as a player, been defined by his sense of humour. Once, early in his career, he was asked in an interview what he would be if he weren’t a footballer. His answer? “A virgin.” Last year, on Twitter, he posted a photo of himself on holiday, feeding some giraffes. “Summer for me is about spending time with the family,” ran the caption. In his new book, How to Be a Footballer, he describes celebratory post-match beers in communal baths. “It’s like a wet pub,” he writes. “From nipples up, it’s a stag do; from the nipples down, it’s a very weird nightclub.” You get the idea. He’s funny.
This level of self-awareness – a frankly supernatural level of self-awareness by the standards of most Premier League footballers – is inextricably linked to his unique physique. “People saw me on the field and I didn’t look like a footballer,” he says. “I still don’t.” So they would take the piss. And, starting at school, Crouch learnt that if he was able to take the piss out of himself, then he would at least beat everyone else to the punch. “You get a bit of stick as a kid, and being able to give some back helped me,” he says, his voice gentle, measured and mildly estuary. “It made me the person I am today. Made me a little more light-hearted than most people. People, especially in football, take themselves far too seriously.”
This theme – the seriousness with which footballers can take themselves – is one that Crouch will return to often. In the meantime, however, what you have to understand is that from the very beginning he was a magnet for abuse. He remembers making his debut as a teenage striker for non-league Dulwich Hamlet, on loan from Spurs, and hearing opposition fans screaming at him, “Freak! Freak! Freak!” Not long after, having signed for Queens Park Rangers, he was heading towards the tunnel at half-time when he noticed there was some trouble in the stands. He looked closer to see that it was actually his dad, embroiled in a fight, having decided to take on a group of fans who had been giving his son nonstop grief on account of his height.
“Even when I played for England, I remember coming on at Old Trafford and being booed by our own fans. I remember thinking, ‘What’s going on here?’ It was probably partly the fact I was playing for Liverpool at the time,” he says, meaning that, given the venue, many of the England fans present would have been rival Manchester United supporters. “But also, there was a preconception about me that I had to prove wrong. I had to play well to combat that and get some respect. At every level, I was getting judged.”
He first met Clancy when she was working as a waitress in a bar in Liverpool and, he says, she has absolutely zero interest in football. In fact, she’s so oblivious that, even though they’ve been together for 12 years now, she’ll often text or call him at 2.45pm on a Saturday to ask him where he is, not realising that he’s about to, y’know, play football. He grins. Crouch is in charge of curating the pre-match music in the Stoke changing room, plugging his phone into a speaker and providing motivational tunes that will get everyone into the Zone just before kick-off. “And then my phone will start ringing and the music will stop playing and we’ll just all stand there, waiting for Abbey to ring out,” he says. “She still does that now.”
Crouch is here to talk about How to Be a Footballer. I’ve read a good number of books by footballers, both for business and pleasure, and his is easily one of the best, mainly on the grounds that it’s incredibly funny. Less straight autobiography than lid-lifting exercise, its author acts as our guide on a journey through the strange world of top-flight professional football, with all its money, unwritten rules and bizarre social mores. “I wanted to open people’s eyes to what they don’t see. Behind the scenes stuff. Team coaches. Training grounds. People see us on a Saturday, but they don’t know the day-to-day workings of a footballer. So I wanted to open people’s eyes to that. And,” he adds a little bashfully, “I wanted it to be entertaining.”
Elsewhere, he reflects on the continuing vogue for tattoos – Crouch has none – and worries about the young player who commemorates signing his first pro contract by getting a tattoo of himself literally signing a piece of paper, holding a pen and a football, flanked by his parents. “But what if he doesn’t make it? Signing a contract doesn’t mean you’ll make the first team, stay in the first team or have a career in football. What if he ends up working in a bank? Maybe he’ll get a tat of him shaking hands with the bank’s HR manager on his stomach.”
EDIT: This could do with being 'binnied' I know but frankly I have way more important things to do
First things first: Peter Crouch is incredibly tall. You probably already know this because you’ve seen him playing football, either on the telly or watching from the stands, and he is always, by some stretch, the gangliest presence on any pitch. But observing from a distance doesn’t really do him justice. You’ve got to get up close to fully appreciate the scale and proportions of the man. I am 6ft 2in and not used to feeling short. Crouch is 6ft 7in and rake thin, beyond beanpole, with limbs so long that when he walks towards you, smiling, it looks vaguely uncanny, as if he’s some kind of friendly animatronic being. He’s wearing jeans, a grey sweatshirt and still retains a deep summer tan, even though the football season is now well under way. He folds himself into a chair in the private members’ lounge of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel in London. Members of the public, he says, regularly feel moved to approach him and tell him how tall he is, as though he didn’t already know. “I get that on a daily basis.” He sighs and shakes his head. “A sad state of affairs.”
To combat this he used to carry around a deck of specially printed business cards, which he would hand to smug-looking strangers the moment they approached him at the bar on a night out and began to open their mouths. They would then pause, frown and look down at the card to see that it bore the following five bullet points:
• Yes, I am tall
• Yes, I am 6ft 7in
• No, the weather isn’t different up here
• No, I don’t play basketball
• I’m so glad we had this conversation
With his wife, Abbey Clancy, in London, 2012GETTY IMAGES
Crouch has always been defined by his height. He has also, for the majority of his 21 years as a player, been defined by his sense of humour. Once, early in his career, he was asked in an interview what he would be if he weren’t a footballer. His answer? “A virgin.” Last year, on Twitter, he posted a photo of himself on holiday, feeding some giraffes. “Summer for me is about spending time with the family,” ran the caption. In his new book, How to Be a Footballer, he describes celebratory post-match beers in communal baths. “It’s like a wet pub,” he writes. “From nipples up, it’s a stag do; from the nipples down, it’s a very weird nightclub.” You get the idea. He’s funny.
This level of self-awareness – a frankly supernatural level of self-awareness by the standards of most Premier League footballers – is inextricably linked to his unique physique. “People saw me on the field and I didn’t look like a footballer,” he says. “I still don’t.” So they would take the piss. And, starting at school, Crouch learnt that if he was able to take the piss out of himself, then he would at least beat everyone else to the punch. “You get a bit of stick as a kid, and being able to give some back helped me,” he says, his voice gentle, measured and mildly estuary. “It made me the person I am today. Made me a little more light-hearted than most people. People, especially in football, take themselves far too seriously.”
This theme – the seriousness with which footballers can take themselves – is one that Crouch will return to often. In the meantime, however, what you have to understand is that from the very beginning he was a magnet for abuse. He remembers making his debut as a teenage striker for non-league Dulwich Hamlet, on loan from Spurs, and hearing opposition fans screaming at him, “Freak! Freak! Freak!” Not long after, having signed for Queens Park Rangers, he was heading towards the tunnel at half-time when he noticed there was some trouble in the stands. He looked closer to see that it was actually his dad, embroiled in a fight, having decided to take on a group of fans who had been giving his son nonstop grief on account of his height.
“Even when I played for England, I remember coming on at Old Trafford and being booed by our own fans. I remember thinking, ‘What’s going on here?’ It was probably partly the fact I was playing for Liverpool at the time,” he says, meaning that, given the venue, many of the England fans present would have been rival Manchester United supporters. “But also, there was a preconception about me that I had to prove wrong. I had to play well to combat that and get some respect. At every level, I was getting judged.”
Abbey is not into football. She still calls him at 2.45 on a Saturday to ask where he is
Today, Crouch has little left to prove. Since starting his career as a gawky teenager to regular chants of, “Does the circus know you’re here?” he has gone on to play more than 700 professional games for clubs including Portsmouth, Aston Villa, Southampton and Tottenham. He’s won the FA Cup with Liverpool and, in 2007, played in the Champions League final. His record for England is exemplary: between 2005 and 2010, he scored 22 goals in 42 appearances and represented his country in both the 2006 and 2010 World Cups. He is now 37, but still playing – and scoring – for Stoke City. He commutes to Staffordshire from Surrey, where he lives with his wife, the model and reality TV star Abbey Clancy, and their three young children, Sophia Ruby, Liberty Rose and baby Johnny.He first met Clancy when she was working as a waitress in a bar in Liverpool and, he says, she has absolutely zero interest in football. In fact, she’s so oblivious that, even though they’ve been together for 12 years now, she’ll often text or call him at 2.45pm on a Saturday to ask him where he is, not realising that he’s about to, y’know, play football. He grins. Crouch is in charge of curating the pre-match music in the Stoke changing room, plugging his phone into a speaker and providing motivational tunes that will get everyone into the Zone just before kick-off. “And then my phone will start ringing and the music will stop playing and we’ll just all stand there, waiting for Abbey to ring out,” he says. “She still does that now.”
Crouch is here to talk about How to Be a Footballer. I’ve read a good number of books by footballers, both for business and pleasure, and his is easily one of the best, mainly on the grounds that it’s incredibly funny. Less straight autobiography than lid-lifting exercise, its author acts as our guide on a journey through the strange world of top-flight professional football, with all its money, unwritten rules and bizarre social mores. “I wanted to open people’s eyes to what they don’t see. Behind the scenes stuff. Team coaches. Training grounds. People see us on a Saturday, but they don’t know the day-to-day workings of a footballer. So I wanted to open people’s eyes to that. And,” he adds a little bashfully, “I wanted it to be entertaining.”
Only a footballer could forget that he was missing a Porsche
It really is. In his deadpan telling, the Premier League is a world of extravagance, stupidity and near-constant hilarity. “Madness, everywhere you look,” he writes. “I think of Jermaine Pennant ... He had been at Stoke for several weeks when he got a call from his previous club, Real Zaragoza, asking if he knew that he’d left his sports car parked outside the city’s train station. Only a footballer could forget that he was missing a Porsche.”Elsewhere, he reflects on the continuing vogue for tattoos – Crouch has none – and worries about the young player who commemorates signing his first pro contract by getting a tattoo of himself literally signing a piece of paper, holding a pen and a football, flanked by his parents. “But what if he doesn’t make it? Signing a contract doesn’t mean you’ll make the first team, stay in the first team or have a career in football. What if he ends up working in a bank? Maybe he’ll get a tat of him shaking hands with the bank’s HR manager on his stomach.”
EDIT: This could do with being 'binnied' I know but frankly I have way more important things to do