In an era when anyone with a chunky social media follower count can get their own documentary, it’s bit of a relief that someone as eminently likable as footballer Peter Crouch is subject to the streaming-platform treatment. In truth, this film is basically a bit of brand enhancement, following on from Crouch’s post-football podcast and Crouchfest live show, and as such doesn’t go anywhere particularly unexpected.
Crouch, of course, was the gawky striker who, in the footballing parlance, proved the doubters wrong by making it into the Premier League, winning the FA Cup with Liverpool, scoring a hat-trick for England and – most potently for the legend – improvising that dopey robot-dance goal celebration and marrying model Abbey Clancy. (Not for nothing is his most famous line the one about what he would be if he wasn’t a footballer.)
Well, Crouch enlarges on the feelings of awkwardness he felt as a teenager trying to break into the game, and even after having done so the trauma of failing to score in his first dozen and a half games for Liverpool. (Improbably, it turns out he met Clancy the night he broke his Liverpool duck; as she acidly remarks, “That was his lucky day.”) And for all Crouch’s sensitivity as a youngster, there’s one or two amazing details that suggest there was a fair amount of gormlessness going on as well; I’d suggest most 24-year-olds know about the existence of bedsheets.
Crouch, however, shows his innate shrewdness in knowing he had to try and set up his post-football life while he was still in the spotlight (“plenty of ex-players told me the moment you retire, no one remembers; so I wanted to do things while I was still current”), and he certainly had the backing of a number of big-name managers – Harry Redknapp, Rafael Benítez, Sven-Göran Eriksson – who kept the faith during Crouch’s wobbliest moments.
Fortunately Crouch’s travails don’t appear to have cut too deeply – “that was the nearest I got to be being depressed,” he says, after being booed by a stadium full of Manchester United fans when he was subbed on during an England international – and if there’s a villain of the piece it might be his hyper-competitive dad Bruce who, it transpires, was one of those parents who gets into fights on the touchline of kids’ games.
Despite all this, Crouch does seem to be a nice guy, which is his and this film’s USP, even if some of the film’s key messages are repeated two or three times. There’s a fair bit of padding, too; it’s clear that much of his playing career, including his time at Stoke, the longest spell of his career at a single club, can’t have been that riveting. Still, this is good-natured, entertaining stuff.
