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Ooooh, isn't he tall?
Fucking hell, they can't leave it alone, can they? This fella tries to make it a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but there are still dozens of references to his height. There is some stuff worth reading amongst the obvious though (and I assume the reference to a photo shoot with that rag is from several years ago, before he gets slated).
The Sunday Times February 05, 2006
The Big Interview: Peter Crouch
JONATHAN NORTHCROFT
The giant Liverpool forward explains to Jonathan Northcroft why the taunts of the boo-boys will not get him down
“You can say you do not like Crouch,
but that means you do not know a lot about football” — Rafael Benitez.
“A basketball player” — Arsène Wenger.
Peter Crouch, the footballer, divides people. On Peter Crouch, the person, everybody agrees. David O’Leary, the manager of Aston Villa, one of his former clubs, put it best: “A lovely big bag of bones.”
We meet at Melwood, Liverpool’s training ground, on an Arctic-like Thursday morning. Although it must be even colder at altitude, Crouch agrees to leave a warm building to do photographs outdoors. In the street a car brakes and the driver gawps: he really is that tall. An oddball group of autograph hunters swarm round Crouch’s chest. He signs their books, poses for their camera phones, smiles.
As we walk back through Melwood’s gates Steven Gerrard almost mows us down. Crouch is holding a futuristic pair of lightweight boots, a gift from his kit sponsor. Gerrard, eyeing the loot, rolls down his car window. “Rascal!” he guffaws. At Liverpool FC they adore their big fella. When Crouch scored against Wigan at Anfield in December, to break his duck 19 games after joining the club, teammates clung to his long limbs and paraded him to the crowd as if back in Istanbul with the European Cup. The supporters’ badges aren’t wholly ironic: “Peter Crouch is God.”
It is light training today, but Crouch was in early to visit the treatment room. His foot (size 11) is bruised and swollen. He is not wearing socks and on his ankles, like a rail map in red ink, is a criss-cross of scabs and welts. Against Birmingham the previous night he had a giant Czech centre-back, Martin Latka, bashing at his lower legs. “My ankles are like this after every game,” Crouch grins. “I’ve been a target man throughout my career, and when you play that role you get bumps and bruises. You accept it.”
Big boys most definitely don’t cry. Crouch is not just a target man position-wise. Since he played his first professional game for Queens Park Rangers six seasons ago the terrace boo-boys have perceived a bullseye on his back. His size makes him different, and being different, for a particular breed of moron, is the most egregious offence one can commit. He has faced abuse — “stick,” he prefers to call it — from every set of opposing fans and, twice, from his own crowd. Disgracefully, these were England “supporters” when he played against Austria and Poland at Old Trafford last year. He actually performed well. But he happened to be three inches taller than any teammate. Big crime. “Jump! Jump!” shrieked the dimwits whenever Crouch challenged for the ball.
Sol Campbell would have left not just the stadium but the country. Instead Crouch politely clapped the crowd at full-time. He says “stick” doesn’t bother him. “I never read much into it because it’s not too concerning. Being so obvious, I’m an easy target, but it’s not a problem,” he says. “You’ve got to laugh. If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry.” He seems sincere. Giants are supposed to be gentle, but can a person of any size really be this genial?
“Peter Crouch does not pass water. He takes it on his chest, holds it up, then passes water. Traffic delays don’t just happen — they happen because Peter Crouch is there and Crouch can hold up anything” — LFC blog.
“Crouch is not the answer” — Mark Lawrenson.
WHEN Bill Shankly signed Ron Yeats in 1961, he introduced him to the press with the immortal line: “Just walk round him, he’s a colossus.” A journalist present remembered: “He was as big as anyone we had ever seen.” People in general, not only footballers, have got bigger. Yeats, now Liverpool’s scout, is 6ft 2Åin; Crouch is 6ft 7in. Yeats barely reaches his nose.
The battered ankles and blackened toes are what Crouch was signed for. He was in a Southampton team that inflicted one of 11 away league defeats on Liverpool in 2004-05. “You could get in and about Liverpool last year,” he recalls. “When the manager signed me he told me he wanted to change things. It doesn’t happen now.” Crouch was part of a programme of buys, including Momo Sissoko, through which Benitez physically enhanced his team. Liverpool’s first XI — average height, at 6ft 1in, just peeping above Chelsea’s — is now the tallest in the league.
Benitez talks a lot about “second balls”, and Crouch is there to ensure that when Liverpool manoeuvre possession into their opponents’ half, the move does not stop with the first pass forward. Take the ball, take the knock, give to a colleague: Crouch’s job.
He enjoys his place in Liverpool’s game plan. “I wouldn’t be happy just being the target man,” he says. “When your team’s struggling, as we were at Southampton, there’s a tendency just to launch the ball towards someone like me, which can be frustrating, because I want to show I can play. At Liverpool we’ve got Stevie (Gerrard) and Xabi Alonso — two of the best passers in the Premiership, if not the world — and we’re set up to play the ball to my feet. I’m loving every minute and I’ve definitely improved.”
As Benitez told anybody who would listen, Crouch was doing his job even when he wasn’t scoring — although it was with a certain perversity that the manager said he didn’t mind if his £7m striker didn’t find the net all season (the odds on this, in league games, narrowed to 12-1 at one point). Baptisms are supposed to be wet, but Crouch’s was dry: his debut was on July 26, his first goal not until December 3. When the span of game time he had gone without netting reached 24 hours, jokes abounded about the striker who really could play all day without scoring.
If he learnt one thing, it was “at a bigger club everything is under the microscope. Everyone has got an opinion. A lot of stupid things were said about me and I had to block it out. I’m a better person for the experience.
“It’s so funny. I went on a run of seven goals in eight games (he is counting a header against Newcastle that went in off Shay Given, on which the dubious goals panel is still to rule) and the same people who had been hammering me were suddenly my biggest fans. The total change of opinion was hilarious — from me being the worst player on earth to, you know, ‘an integral part of the Liverpool masterplan’. The same people!” For a while he avoided picking up a paper or watching television.
“It (the drought) was never mentioned in the dressing room. My teammates and manager were happy with me, so I carried on. Only when it got to a point when the coverage was getting a bit silly did the manager pull me aside and say, ‘Are you all right? Because we’ve got no problem with you, you’re playing really well’.”
Was he all right? “I’d needed that pat on the back, but I honestly knew things would change. Any striker who says they never have one of those runs is lying. If I’d still been at Southampton, nobody would have noticed. The problem was, I’d just signed for a high- profile club. It’s the life of a striker. If you miss, you’re the scapegoat; if you score, you’re a hero even if you’ve played worst in the team.”
The Kop never barracked him, even when he missed a penalty against Portsmouth. “Everywhere I went in Liverpool, everyone was superb. I’ve found there’s a lot of togetherness in the city, it’s all of us against all of them, and maybe that’s why people responded to my situation. I think a different set of supporters might have jumped on the bandwagon and given me stick.”
Crouch returns to an old haunt today. He was once a ball-boy at Stamford Bridge, and Bruce, his father, would take him to stand in the Shed. Posters of Gordon Durie and Kerry Dixon challenged for space on his wall with those of Les Ferdinand and Roy Wegerle. “My mates are either QPR or Chelsea, and I liked both. Everyone wants tickets for the game (today). I’ll get the QPR ones tickets and leave the Chelsea lads at home . . .”
Liverpool may fancy themselves as Chelsea’s main domestic rivals, but they are 18 points behind the champions, albeit with two games in hand, and Chelsea won 4-1 at Anfield in October. “We all came off the pitch saying, ‘What happened?’ It was one of those days everything they hit went in. The score wasn’t a reflection of the game. They’re so far ahead because of their consistency, which is a credit to those players, but head-to-head I think we’ ve matched them, generally. We’ve nothing to fear.”
We talk about Chelsea’s hunger. “You can see it in people like John Terry and Frank Lampard,” he says admiringly. “But we’re no different. Look round our dressing room and there’s a lot of winners. The home-grown lads, Stevie and Jamie Carragher, are the main characters. Carra, especially, would be first to tell you if you’re not pulling your weight. I’ve never played with a better player than Stevie.
“We drew against Birmingham, but it felt like we’d lost. Everyone’s so used to winning, the manager especially. He’s amazing for that. When we win there’s no pats on the back, there aren’t too many ‘well dones’. It’s all about looking to the next fixture, the training session, even, and that’s the mark of someone who wants to win.”
“I would like to have Crouch in the World Cup squad. It depends how he gets on, but he is very special” — Sven-Göran Eriksson.
“Sven is facing the firing squad. He is asked if he has any last requests. ‘One,’ he says. ‘I’d like Peter Crouch to take the shot’ ” — internet joke.
BRUCE CROUCH has a high-powered career in advertising. When his son was 14 he was injured playing for QPR youths and couldn’t do his paper round, so for a few weeks, Bruce would get up at 5.30am and drive round Ealing delivering newspapers. The early start was necessary because, as creative director for a leading UK company, he had to be at his desk for 8am. Bruce is now global creative leader for an international agency but still finds time to support his son. Both parents were at Anfield on Wednesday and stayed the night at Peter’s flat in Alderley Edge, leaving for London at 6am, with Bruce required at his office in Mayfair for the start of business.
“I owe Mum and Dad everything. They took me everywhere when I was younger and are at every game. Dad asked Mum where she wanted to go for their anniversary last year and she said St Mary’s,” Crouch beams.
After that maiden goal versus Wigan, Crouch went out for a celebratory meal with his father. Bruce once left his seat during a game at Gillingham because the crowd were abusing his son so badly, he could not trust himself not to thump somebody. “To be fair, Dad’s got a temper on him. He’s learnt to curb it, but when I first started and someone said something in the crowd, I wouldn’t say he’d beat them up, but he’d have a few stern words,” says Crouch. “He’s 6ft 5in and 15st, a big lad, but he’s had to mellow.”
He thought of Mum and Dad when the jeers came playing for England. “It must have hurt my parents. We didn’t talk about it afterwards, it’s one of those things you try and put to bed, but I’m sure it wasn’t nice for them. All the ups and downs throughout my career — they’ve suffered them with me.”
How did he feel at Old Trafford? “To be honest it wasn’t too much of an issue. A lot of people made it an issue, but for me it was a Liverpool player playing at Man United. It was one of those things. I played in the England v Argentina match (in Geneva last November) and when I was warming up I got a great reaction from the fans. When I came on the reception was superb.”
Crouch did not have the inner-city background shared by many footballers. He was born in Macclesfield, while his father was working in Manchester, and spent 18 months in Singapore at a young age. He retains a love of travel. After doing 10 GCSEs at school he completed a GNVQ in leisure and tourism while on Tottenham’s books, and having “done America” wants to go round the world someday “like people do when they finish university”. He has done a fair bit of touring in football. He is just 25 and Liverpool are his seventh club.
Much of his spare time at the moment is spent with estate agents: he wants to move from Cheshire to Merseyside. “I’m hoping to be here for a long time, put down roots and finally stay at a club,” he says. He still owns a flat in Portsmouth from his days as a Pompey player, although “after the reception I got last time we played there, I won’t be using it much!” Height, for once, wasn’t the issue — more the fact that, after leaving Fratton Park, Crouch signed for Southampton.
During his breakthrough season at QPR when he was 19 he lived at home in Ealing with his parents. This is one top player who has not spent his life in the Premiership’s moneyed cocoon. “At the start of my career I drove an old green Polo and the lads gave me some stick, because I couldn’t fit into it, probably . . . It was all I could afford and I thought I was lucky. Then I had a Renault Megane for a while. I thought I was top man with that! At Portsmouth we trained at a navy base and they used to play rugby on it on Sundays. The pitch was terrible and we had to wash our own kit.”
What else is different in the Football League? “You go everywhere on the bus. You don’t get the bus anywhere at Liverpool. You fly for the local derby! Everything’s done for you here, there are great facilities and loads of staff. It’s all geared up so you worry about nothing except doing your business on the pitch.”
Crouch spent 2½ seasons in the then Division One (including a loan spell at Norwich City while an Aston Villa player). The memory of playing at Grimsby and Stockport on wet midweek nights makes him appreciate his current life all the more “and work harder to stay here”. His background is also one reason for the thick skin. “At least in the Premiership when you’ve got 60,000 people screaming at you, you block the noise out. It was worse in Division One: when you ’ve got one man and a dog watching and go past them and can hear every word of abuse the bloke’s shouting, it’s not pleasant.”
Gerry Francis, his manager at QPR, ordered him to eat steaks and burgers. Even now he likes going to McDonald’s, but still can’t bulk up, although a gym regimen prescribed by Benitez is working slowly. Crouch has added 4lb of muscle since joining Liverpool and is 13½st, much better than the 11st 12lb of earlier in his career, but still light for his size. Jan Koller, the Czech Republic’s 6ft 7in striker, is almost 3st heavier.
Yet there is power in those pipe-cleaner arms and legs. “I lift as much as any of the lads in the gym,” Crouch says. He enjoys the physical demands. “You play against defenders who’ll do anything to stop you and there are some tough, aggressive lads in the Premiership. I’ve found this season, for sheer strength, Richard Dunne has been the most difficult and John Terry’s the other obvious choice.
“There are some hard defenders out there, but I’d like to think I’ve got the better of most of them. I’ve definitely picked up a few tricks in terms of holding people off — having long arms helps . . . I’ve learnt to use my physique to my advantage and taken on board what people like Niall Quinn have said about my positioning. I feel I’ve come to a stage in my career where I’ve sussed it out, learnt how to play.”
“He’s a nice boy and sometimes he’s too nice. As a centre-forward in England you must not be nice” — Rafael Benitez.
“Rodney finished by being a millionaire” — Peter Crouch.
IT IS as well Crouch is an Only Fools And Horses fan, because, nicknamed Rodders from the outset at QPR, even his father was calling him it at one point. Crouch even consented to pose with a Trotter-style Reliant Robin for The Sun. He is too good to be true. If he really feels so even-humoured about all the abuse, Benitez is right. Sometimes, for a footballer, he is too nice. “I know it has been said, but when I go on the pitch, it’s not ‘after you’. I think you can be as nice as you like off the pitch, but when you get on it, you can’t be nice, you’ve got to change your personality and thankfully I can do that,” Crouch says.
So he does have an edge. “Of course. You can be ruthless. You can be aggressive . . . but you don’t have to go home and be aggressive with your missus. You can change. I know inside how much things matter to me, how much I want it. Maybe it doesn’t come across at times, but I’ve got a strong desire to succeed. Maybe because I’m not so emotional, people don’t see it, but I assure you it’s there. I’ve always been a person who . . . I don’t show too many feelings to people. I relay some things, but a lot of things I keep to myself.”
Including his true feelings about chants such as “Freak! Freak! Freak!”? All that “stick doesn’t bother me” stuff: nonsense, surely? “You get the odd idiot,” he starts . . . But he’s not going there. The grin won’t be dislodged from his face. “The good points about being a footballer far outweigh the bad. Stick’s part and parcel. I’ve been on certain terraces myself when I was younger, dishing it out. There ’s a lot of witty people in football crowds and sometimes you’ll hear something that makes you stop and laugh even if it’s directed at you.” It really is water off an emu’s back.
“I’ve always liked banter,” he concludes. “My mates at home, we take the mick as much as any group of lads. Just when I think I’ve heard every gag in the book regarding height, they come up with a new one and make me laugh.
“You’ve got to have a sense of humour. If I took what people said about me to heart, there’s no way I could be a footballer. You can’t take yourself too seriously. A lot of people do, but I don’t. It’s got me this far, so I won’t be changing.”
“He’s big, he’s red, his feet stick out the bed” — Kop song.
DO THEY? “Ha. My bed’s all right. But it is true a lot of the time when we go away and stay in hotels or what have you. But I’ve learnt to deal with that, to be honest. And you’ve seen the state of my ankles: it’s good to keep the blood off the sheets . . .”
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Check the writing skills forever coming tight with the quill.
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