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Peter Crouch
Peter James Crouch (born 30 January 1981) is an
English footballer who plays for Premier
League club Stoke City as a striker. He was capped
42 times by the England national team from 2005
to 2010, scoring 22 goals for his country in that
time, and appearing at two World Cups.
Crouch started his career as a trainee with
Tottenham Hotspur. He failed to make an appearance for Spurs and after loan spells at Dulwich
Hamlet and Swedish club IFK Hässleholm he joined Queens Park Rangers.
QPR were relegated at the end of the 2000–01 season
and Portsmouth stepped in and paid £1.5 million for Crouch. He had a good
season at Fratton Park and after scoring 19 goals he joined Aston Villa in
March 2002 for £5 million. He had a relatively poor spell at Villa and was
loaned out to Norwich City in 2003 before making a move
to Southampton where he re-gained his form and was signed by Liverpool in
July 2005.
At Liverpool, Crouch enjoyed considerable success, winning the FA Community
Shield and FA Cup in 2006 and also gained a runners-up medal in the 2007
UEFA Champions League Final. After scoring 42 goals in three seasons
at Anfield Portsmouth re-signed him for £11 million and he forged an effective
partnership with fellow England player Jermain Defoe. He spent just one season at Portsmouth and left for Tottenham Hotspur where he again linked up
with Defoe and Harry Redknapp. He scored a vital goal for Tottenham against
Manchester City which earned the club a place in the UEFA Champions League.
He scored seven goals in ten European matches for Spurs in 2010–11, but
was unable to replicate this form in the Premier League. He joined Stoke
City on 31 August 2011 for a club record fee of £10 million. In his first season
with Stoke he scored 14 goals and won the club's player of the year award.
In May 2005 he was handed his first call-up to the England senior squad by
manager Sven-Göran Eriksson for the team's tour of the United States, making
his debut against Colombia.He went on to make two appearances during
the 2006 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign for England: starting
against Austria in a 1–0 victory and coming on as a substitute
against Poland in a 2–1 win. In the latter appearance, Crouch's introduction as
a second-half substitute was booed by England's own supporters’
On 1 March 2006 he scored his first goal for England, the equaliser in a 2–1
friendly win over Uruguay. He did this whilst bizarrely wearing two different squad numbers on his shirt – No. 21 on the front (his designated squad