{"id":477859,"date":"2019-07-12T12:43:17","date_gmt":"2019-07-12T16:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonfootball.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=477859"},"modified":"2019-07-12T12:43:17","modified_gmt":"2019-07-12T16:43:17","slug":"peter-crouch-retires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2019\/07\/12\/peter-crouch-retires\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Stoke City, Liverpool and England Star Peter Crouch Retires"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonfootball.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/clubs\/burnley\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Burnley<\/a> striker <a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/73d9bdc7\/Peter-Crouch?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Peter Crouch<\/a> has announced his retirement from football after 21 years as a professional.<\/p>\n<h2>Peter Crouch Announces Retirement From Football<\/h2>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">After a lot of deliberation this summer I have decided to retire from football ! <br \/>Our wonderful game has given me everything. <br \/>I\u2019m so thankful to everyone who helped me get there and to help me stay there for so long. X<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Peter Crouch (@petercrouch) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/petercrouch\/status\/1149618340010160129?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 12, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>21-Year Professional Career<\/h3>\n<p>Crouch&#8217;s contract at Burnley expired in June and the 38-year-old was unable to find a new team.<\/p>\n<p>The former <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonfootball.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/clubs\/aston-villa-club-news-analysis-fixtures\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aston Villa<\/a> striker counts\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonfootball.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/clubs\/liverpool\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Liverpool<\/a> and Portsmouth among the eleven clubs he featured for. Crouch also earned 42 caps for England.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you told me at 17 I&#8217;d play in World Cups, get to a Champions League final, win the FA Cup and get 100 Premier League goals, I would have avoided you at all costs,&#8221; Crouch said on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/petercrouch\/status\/1149618414534574080\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s been an absolute dream come true. Our wonderful game has given me everything. I&#8217;m so thankful to everyone who helped me get there and helped me stay there for so long.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Crouch&#8217;s career began at <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonfootball.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/clubs\/tottenham\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tottenham<\/a> before spells on loan with Dulwich Hamlet and IFK Hassleholm. A move to Queens Park Rangers preceded moves to Portsmouth, Aston Villa, <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonfootball.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/clubs\/norwich-city\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Norwich<\/a> on loan, <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonfootball.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/clubs\/southampton\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Southampton<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonfootball.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/clubs\/liverpool\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Liverpool<\/a>, Portsmouth again, Tottenham, <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonfootball.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/clubs\/stoke-city\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Stoke City<\/a> and Burnley.<\/p>\n<p>The tall striker scored 108 goals &#8211; a Premier League record of 53 headers &#8211; in 468 Premier League appearances. Crouch also won the FA Cup in 2005-06 with Liverpool and played in the 2007 Champions League final.<\/p>\n<h3>Crouch: &#8220;Football, simply, made my dreams come true.&#8221;<\/h3>\n<p>In his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/sport\/football\/article-7240069\/PETER-CROUCH-RETIRES-told-42-England-caps-locked-up.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Daily Mail<\/a> column, Crouch said:\u00a0&#8220;To go from being a regular starter to someone whose role is limited to 10 or 15 minutes off the bench has been hard to accept.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I will be 39 in January but I am physically fit and could have carried on. What I didn&#8217;t want to be was someone who was thrown on to have balls smashed up to them.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Football has opened up avenues that I never thought were possible when I started scoring goals in the Hayes and District league as an Under-10. Football, simply, made my dreams come true.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think back to when I was 17. I was a trainee at Tottenham but there were 10 forwards blocking my route to the first team. They loaned me out to Dulwich Hamlet then IFK Hassleholm in Sweden. Let&#8217;s be honest &#8211; you would not have taken odds on me making it then.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Collecting shirts was never something that interested me but I collected memories and have stories that I will be able to tell my children&#8217;s children. This former footballer had the time of his life. It&#8217;s time to write the next chapters.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"lbOFoQn9SJBcb2Lc8Qqq4A\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.co.uk\/detail\/943591294\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'lbOFoQn9SJBcb2Lc8Qqq4A',sig:'9MbOM9twCWlZNkUi2Kgh-wSaed0LDfjyrAMOiUaYpnU=',w:'594px',h:'386px',items:'943591294',caption: true ,tld:'co.uk',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Burnley striker Peter Crouch has announced his retirement from football after 21 years as a professional. Peter Crouch Announces Retirement From Football After a lot of deliberation this summer I have decided to retire from football ! Our wonderful game has given me everything. I\u2019m so thankful to everyone who helped me get there and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3040,"featured_media":477861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30,2,16,1370,3,21,24],"tags":[95,2548,356,96,136],"class_list":["post-477859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","category-liverpool","category-norwich-city","category-premier-league","category-stoke","category-tottenham","tag-liverpool","tag-peter-crouch","tag-stoke-city","tag-tottenham-hotspur","tag-world-football"],"modified_by":"Matt Lee","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3040"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}