Peter Crouch I , R O B O T How to be a Footballer 2 Contents Picture credits Prologue Fans Managers Food Red Mists Strikers Holidays Shirts Referees Set Pieces Penalties Injuries Nerves Trophies Agents The Bench Chairmen Formations Own Goals Tackling Away Days The End Picture Section Acknowledgements ABOUT THE AUTHOR First things first: yes I am very tall, no the weather isn’t different up here, and no I don’t play basketball. Glad that’s out the way. I’ve been a professional footballer for 20 years, have 42 England caps, have scored over 100 Premier League goals and hold the record for the most headed goals in Premier League history. In my time I’ve been promoted, relegated, won trophies, gone months without scoring, been bought, sold, loaned and abused – and I’ve loved almost every moment of it. Also by Peter Crouch with Tom Fordyce How to be a Footballer To my beautiful wife Abbey, who will only read this page of the book. I love you and laugh with you every day, (even when you’re pregnant). This one is for you. Love you always. x PICTURE CREDITS 1 Football is a serious business. (Photo by Harriet Lander/Copa/Getty Images) 2 I once had a night out in Brighton dressed as a chicken. (© Peter Crouch) 3 A magnificent welcome in Burnley. (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images) 4 A fan in Speedos and a snorkel (Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images) 5 Former QPR defender Justin Channing. (© Peter Crouch) 6 Showing Fabio Capello my right-arm off-spin. (Photo by Michael Regan/Getty Images) 7 You didn’t argue with Fabio. (Photos by Michael Regan/Getty Images and ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images) 8 Rudi Voller reaches into his magnificent perm. (Photo by Bob Thomas Sports Photography via Getty Images) 9 ‘I’m not sure why I’m on this pitch.’ (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images) 10 When I found out about Gareth Bale’s magic beans, it blew my mind and changed my world. (GLYN KIRK/AFP/Getty Images) 11 I could out-jump him even if I couldn’t quite out-pace him. (Photo by Jamie McDonald/Getty Images) 12 Jermain Defoe and I had a prolific record playing together. (GLYN KIRK/AFP/Getty Images) 13 He could have passed a few more times. (KIRK/AFP/Getty Images) 14 Courtney Pitt and I were very much style icons. (© Peter Crouch) 15 I originally asked for the England shellsuit top at Christmas 1990. (© Peter Crouch) 16 Mike Dean. (Photo by James Williamson – AMA/Getty Images) 17 Jeff Winter. (Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images) 18 Play to the whistle, they always say. (Photo by Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images) 19 After I scored against Arsenal from a corner, Arsene Wenger described me as a ‘basketball player’. (Photo by Ben Radford/Getty Images) 20 Harry Kane. (Photo by Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Getty Images) 21 Steven Gerrard. (Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images) 22 Legendary Coventry goalkeeper Steve Ogrizovic. (© Getty) 23 Here I am sporting the latest designer luggage from the Parisian fashion house G’Arbage. (ANDREW YATES/AFP/Getty Images) 24 Tackling is part of the game (Photos by Athena Pictures/Getty Images and IAN KINGTON/AFP/Getty Images) 25 You put the luminous subs’ bib over your choice of wet-top or big coat. (PAUL ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images) 26 You look like you can’t even dress yourself. (Photo by Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images) 27 Loved this day. (Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images) 28 Another trophy. (Photo by Popperfoto via Getty Images/Getty Images) 29 The fab four, or at least the quite good quartet: me, Steve Sidwell, Glenn Johnson and Sean Davis. (© Peter Crouch) 30 I interviewed Andy Cole and Les Ferdinand for my new Amazon show. (© Peter Crouch) 31 My last game in football! (Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images) 32 Possibly my favourite non-footballing moment. (© Peter Crouch) 33 Iniesta and me … twice (© Peter Crouch) 34 I arrived at Crouchfest fearing no one was going to turn up. (© Peter Crouch) PROLOGUE A footballer’s book is supposed to be a simple affair. ‘I was born here. My mum and dad look like this. I was good at football and I got better at football. Here are some matches you already know about and some you forgot. This guy was nicknamed Trigger and that guy we called Smudge.’ But I never was your typical footballer and so see no reason why my book should follow conventional suit. Rather than the same old same old, a tour through the familiar and the banal, I’d rather show you how it really is: the secret tricks and the inside stories, the madness and the mistakes, the truth behind the puff and the magic behind the curtain. When you’ve played at the top for two decades, you see things that you can’t forget: the players who are so scared by the idea of cooking for themselves that they get the canteen staff to clingfilm up the same lunch they have just eaten so they can have it again for tea; the one who sustained a tiny cut on his leg yet went to the club doctor every day to ask to him apply a Band-Aid on his behalf; the player who shut himself away in his hotel room every night to have his dinner opposite his smartphone, a smartphone showing his wife on FaceTime eating exactly the same dinner at exactly the same time. You might think you know what football chairmen are like. You don’t. Not until you’ve heard about the one who propositioned me from an open- topped sports car, or the one who spent so much on their house that they could have bought the entire local town. You don’t really understand what agents are until you’ve heard about the one who rides a motorised trike lit by UV lights around Marble Arch, wearing a fur coat and smoking a cigar. Over the following pages, you’ll also discover which position on the pitch produces the most selfish human beings in existence, what the stretches substitutes do on the touchline really mean and why grown men who play football are unable to choose their own pants. I’ve done a few things myself as well. It’s time I got the story about the worst 100-metre race of all time off my chest, and explain why my early career was nearly derailed by me and my friends inventing the thrilling new sport of bush-jumping. I also did something on holiday once involving a pleasure craft, a sudden nautical storm and a bottle-opener that I cannot carry with me any longer. Not for us the straightforward analysis you’ve become accustomed to on television. Instead, I’m going to reveal why the outswinging corner is always better than the inswinger, what really happens when you pull out of a tackle and why Rafa Benítez’s pet Alsatians are the best-behaved dogs in Europe. Find out what secret gift the Real Madrid president gives out when he makes a big signing. Come with me onto Roman Abramovich’s yacht and discover what happens when you spill a drink on his deep-pile carpet. Step inside the Golden Rhombus of Football and understand how a man can lose himself within it. You may be familiar with Mickey Rourke. You won’t be familiar with what happened with Mickey and me in Miami one summer: I’ve had to corroborate several subplots with friends to remind myself that all of it actually took place. It will shock you when you find out which board game obsesses Premier League dressing-rooms and which international player intimidates all the others with his dominance of it. We will talk about the silly little games we play. There is one so childish yet so addictive that the truth about it has never leaked out before. Until now. We will dig into the curious and often disturbing world of referees: the strange clothes they wear; the mysterious so-called training they undertake; and why they are reminiscent of the worst defensive midfielders of all time. We will discover the identity of the greatest tackler I have ever faced and try to fathom his obsession with stonewashed jeans. I’ve been lucky in football. I have gone to places and experienced things that I could never have dreamed of. I know the best trophies to drink champagne from and why the bubbly you get for man-of-the-match performances cannot always be trusted. I’ve seen a lumpy clogger of a player transformed into an inadvertent elegant genius, simply by being in the wrong place at a very bad time. I have witnessed one of Fabio Capello’s assistants parting the arse hair of England legends with a highly unusual hairdryer technique. It hasn’t all worked out. There was the time with Madonna when the Robot only got me so far. There was the incident when a member of the British royal family made a disparaging remark about my ability to attract women. And don’t get me started on what happened the time my dad and I found ourselves teeing off in front of one of the legends of modern golf. Still. There are secret rules that need to be brought out into the open. Why managers can never drive players’ cars. The secret platform at the London train station that is football’s equivalent of Harry Potter’s Platform 9¾.