#1018 - Peter Crouch - Behind The Bravado of Modern British Football

Speaker 1 Do ex-players turn to podcasts because TV punditry feels fake?

Speaker 2 God,

Speaker 2 I felt like I was maybe one of the first like to do a podcast. I only did a podcast because I had a book to promote Bizarre.
And someone said I'll do a podcast.

Speaker 2 And then I genuinely thought no one would listen to it. And then,

Speaker 2 you know, we had a laugh doing it. And I probably said a hell of a lot more than I probably should.
And then I... And then I realized realized people were actually listening.

Speaker 2 You know, it was one of those where we weren't planning on having a huge following and then it kind of arrived. And then, I don't know, it was a bit more of

Speaker 2 the fact that I was being open and honest in a world of football where you're told to be guarded and secretive. You know, it's very much like don't say the wrong thing.

Speaker 2 And I think the fact that we were open and honest gave it a platform and people wanted to listen to it. And

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 punditry stuff, yeah, I think it's a little bit more still in that world of

Speaker 2 stay guarded, don't say the wrong thing. Whereas podcasts, as I'm sure you know yourself, you can definitely be yourself a little bit more and show your personality.

Speaker 2 And I think that's, I think it's obviously the benefit of them.

Speaker 1 What is it about the world of football that encourages the players to be so guarded? Because you're right.

Speaker 1 I have an understanding of the

Speaker 1 psychology of the motivation of players from other sports, of rock stars.

Speaker 1 And football players seem to be very sort of

Speaker 1 dead outside of the

Speaker 1 permitted interview at the end of the match, which is 30 seconds long. There's not much going on.
Is that prescribed? Top down? Is that something that's cultural, bottom-up? What's going on?

Speaker 2 I do think it's changing in a lot of ways because I think certainly when I was playing, it was very much go into an interview, do a press conference, but don't say anything.

Speaker 2 I think that bizarrely was our mentality was, I want to come out of this interview having got through it and not said anything too controversial,

Speaker 2 anything to wind anyone up. If we've got a derby game on a weekend, I don't want to get their supporters rolled up by saying something negative about the other team.

Speaker 2 I want to go in there and say the plainest answers I can possibly say.

Speaker 1 Well, there is a reputation among footballers for giving slightly bland answers.

Speaker 2 Exactly right. And I think there's an element of that.
Oh, I totally understand because quite often I think in a world now where players have social media, players can have their own voice,

Speaker 2 players can get things across, there's certainly a definite shift in it. I think certainly when I was playing and before me, the kind of newspapers ran the media, really.

Speaker 2 And I think something that you say in a newspaper, in a headline, as I'm pretty sure you would know being on a podcast yourself if someone takes something you say out of context and puts that in a headline you know that can look very different to what you're trying to get across and i think if you're certainly in in britain at that time most people formed opinions through newspapers and i think if i'm saying you know saying something tongue in cheek about a player on the opposition side, we all know it's a joke, everyone in the room knows it's a joke, but if you put that in a headline and make it look like it's not a joke, people can get offended and and people's opinion of you will be warped and i think certainly that was the whole probably reason behind the fact that we don't want to say anything and we're boring and if most players used to give very boring interviews i i happen to think it is changing a lot now i think um certainly with through the world of social media we can see a lot more of players personalities podcasts like this people do want to come on and you can kind of you're not just a footballer um you know, who does a boring interview at the end of the game, you can be a little bit more than that now.

Speaker 1 Well, I think about UFC fighters who

Speaker 1 maybe

Speaker 1 more

Speaker 1 of what they do is outside of the sport, right? Almost all of what they do, boxes too. It is all about the press conference, it's all about the podcast.
You know, look at someone like Ariel Halwani

Speaker 1 who'll have each different fighter from a card that's coming up on UFC or, you know, BKFC or whatever. And

Speaker 1 that is what they do. And I still, I don't know.
Are we seeing footballers change because they can now counter the narrative in the mainstream press?

Speaker 1 They can always just put up an Instagram story or they can address these things directly.

Speaker 1 Is it your opinion that because you had no direct access to be able to put something out to the fans or to the world other than again through the same newspaper that just said something mean and out of context about you previously, that it meant everyone was a lot more scared about getting stuff wrong.

Speaker 2 Everyone was petrified, genuinely petrified.

Speaker 2 Like, as you gotta think about it, like quite often in football, you know, it's working class background, you know, lads are coming from tough environments,

Speaker 2 you know, maybe not the most educated. And that's genuinely the case.

Speaker 2 And I think you're then put into a press conference with what I would say at the time, you know, very kind of well-educated people trying to make you trip up on your words or say things that you don't want to say.

Speaker 2 And I think, of course, that young lad, 18, 19 years of age, is going to be pretty guarded, you know, in an environment like that. And I think that is, you know, certainly has been the case.

Speaker 2 I think with regards to boxing, you have said, like, like you said there, it has become a show more than the, I mean, quite often the boxing takes kind of a back seat to this whole, you know, performance.

Speaker 2 Everything is WWE. Yeah, it feels like, you know, we're all trying to kind of sell subscriptions and sell tickets.
And I totally understand it.

Speaker 2 You know, you want to be the biggest spectacle you can, and you know, there's people behind the scenes that want to make a hell of a lot of money from it, and they are.

Speaker 2 But yeah, I mean, quite often, I think it's almost pulling the wool over the eyes of the fans in some degree to say, you know, two people that look like they really hate each other probably don't.

Speaker 1 They're just selling the fans.

Speaker 1 As you're speaking there, I'm wondering whether most

Speaker 1 team sports tend to not be like that. And I think that that's the case.
I don't think as many basketball players, Steph Curry isn't giving tons of interviews talking shit about other people.

Speaker 1 Baseball, not the same.

Speaker 1 Cricket, I guess, but I suppose cricket is quite placid by nature and the sport is a little bit more gentlemanly. So like the shit talk would be of a different kind if you were to do that.

Speaker 1 But when I think about tennis, fucking Novak Djokovic was just on Jay Shetty's show. So I'm wondering whether there's maybe something different about you're part of a team and Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 1 Peter, what do you just say?

Speaker 1 There's 10 other guys on the pitch that are at the mercy of that shit thing that you just said yesterday.

Speaker 1 Everyone's given a stick. So you're

Speaker 1 responsible for the blast radius of the bullshit around you. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 Yeah. And also, I think, you know, with a team sport like that,

Speaker 2 there's an element of, you know, still being at school. You know, like you want to fit in.
You know, if you're

Speaker 2 in a single sport, if you're a boxer or a golfer, you know, you can't say what you like. It's on you, right?

Speaker 2 And I think, you know, if we, I always remember it's kind of Jamie Carragher who really drilled it into me when I was at Liverpool.

Speaker 2 You know, going to the press conference, don't say anything to kind of wind up the opposition or give them an opportunity.

Speaker 2 You know, the Man United game, Man United Liverpool game, for instance, was, it was such a huge game, the Liverpool Everton game or any Champions League semi-final.

Speaker 2 Anything you said in that press conference, it was almost, I remember him kind of almost coaching you through it. It'd be like, don't say this, don't say that, don't wind them up in this way.

Speaker 2 And I'm going in there thinking of all the things that Jamie told me to say in the press conference because he's thinking, you know, he was more experienced than me at the time.

Speaker 2 And he's just trying to help me out in the fact that you don't want something. blazoned all over the newspaper, all over Sky Sports News.
You don't want to say the wrong thing.

Speaker 2 And I think that was why quite often footballers give very mundane interviews.

Speaker 1 That's a great get out of jail free card if somebody purposefully actually just gives one because I didn't have anything to say that did.

Speaker 1 I was being tactical and so yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2 At least there's some boring footballers out there as well.

Speaker 1 That might contribute too.

Speaker 1 So I think I said before, I think there's archetypes of psychology in some sports, you know, sort of golfers being very precise, maybe a little bit autistic, baseball players being sort of superstitious and maybe a little bit obsessive.

Speaker 1 What is the

Speaker 1 psychological archetype, the common psychological archetype of top-flight footballers in your experience?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think

Speaker 2 I got to a top level. I got to, you know, Premier League.
I played for my country. I played in the Champions League and

Speaker 2 I've won a small amount, but I'm very proud of the career I had. But I still class myself as, yeah, I got to a top level, but I would not class myself as

Speaker 2 elite.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 I saw the elite and that was a different mentality to what I had.

Speaker 2 I enjoyed myself. I won games and I enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 Whereas, you know, we'd win something or I'd get to a final and I'd sit back afterwards and go, that was fucking amazing. Loved it.

Speaker 2 Whereas the players, I'm talking to certainly the players I played with for England, Gerard,

Speaker 2 Lampard Rooney,

Speaker 2 John Terry, that kind of player

Speaker 2 who was multiple, multiple winners, you know, Rio Ferdinand. They just did not look like they enjoyed it ever.
And

Speaker 2 like it was always the next thing. It was like, you know, yeah, we've won that game, but we could have done that.
Or, you know,

Speaker 2 we've won that, but tomorrow we're training again.

Speaker 2 And not just that, it rubs off on everyone else around you.

Speaker 2 And if you look at the, you know, certainly the team in 2005 that won the Champions League with Liverpool in East Han Ball.

Speaker 2 Not the greatest team to ever win a Champions League, let's be perfectly honest.

Speaker 2 But, you know, that mentality that Gerard had, I thought, and Jamie Carragher, certainly at that time, kind of dragged that team team to success. And I think that rubs off on other people.
And

Speaker 2 that is the mentality that I would say is the best of the best.

Speaker 2 I think they would, there's probably regrets in there and there's a little bit of pain

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 they probably look back, some of those players now and think, I wish I'd just enjoyed that.

Speaker 1 But they'll look at you with a sense of envy and think, God, Peter just had so much fun. Yeah.
You know, he looks back with fond playfulness.

Speaker 2 And I have this sort of weird reverse stoicism where i didn't let myself feel the wins but i did let myself feel the failures yeah and i don't know what's right or wrong there do you know what i mean like yeah if i had if i had that kind of mentality and don't i'm not i wasn't unprofessional you know what i mean i i was obviously the minute i walked through the training ground i'm switched on but I did sit back and go like, or what, you know, I'd watch a match of the day and go, I was great there.

Speaker 2 You know, I did really well there. Whereas they would always be look at the negatives and try and improve.

Speaker 2 And of course, I tried to improve as well, but I did enjoy the fact that we were having success.

Speaker 1 In your experience, did those people

Speaker 1 just have that for football, or did that bleed into the rest of their life?

Speaker 1 And then to compare that to you, too, is that something that you find relatively easy with the other stuff, with playing with the kids, with doing the podcast, with starting a business, with enjoying your time on a holiday and work and all the rest of it?

Speaker 1 My point being, I wonder how much of that is you are an elite performer within this pursuit, and this is the mindset that's made you you show so and you are a obsessive

Speaker 1 typically negatively focused person which means that you pay a lot of attention to where things are going wrong and you improve but that's just you and that is global that's across your entire life is that how you like these people are like that in and on the pitch and off the pitch in both both camps oh i would say so yeah and i and and in all honesty i'm probably doing myself a little bit disservice of the fact that i am like that as well like you know i think when you get to that level of off sport and winning matters, right?

Speaker 2 It really matters.

Speaker 2 Then I do think you take that into every aspect of your life. And I think that's a good thing.
Like, you know,

Speaker 2 I don't let my kids win anything, really.

Speaker 2 You know, my, my, my wife's saying, you know, just let her win. And he like, no.

Speaker 2 Like, and I come back, I'll come back and say, yeah, like, I destroyed her. She's like 14, you know, I'm like, play tennis and I want to win.
I want to beat her.

Speaker 1 You do know that one day.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but that, that, I think, because my dad was like it with me. He would not let me win anything.
And then when I got to the point where I, I did beat him, it meant so much more.

Speaker 2 Because I think if she's, my little girl's really good at tennis and

Speaker 2 and I just obviously she's getting to the point where it's, you know, she's good. But obviously the moment she does beat me is the moment she's going to, she's going to feel so good.

Speaker 2 And I think it's all that pain that she's gone through before

Speaker 2 is going to be worth it and i genuinely

Speaker 2 that's going to be her champions league yeah i but i believe that my dad did it to me i was playing tennis and we had used to have these battles and my mum used to come down and i mean she she'd come down for five minutes we'd both tell her in no uncertain terms to leave it was so aggressive people used to come down to the to the park to watch me and my dad's games and um They were so, it was intense.

Speaker 2 And it got to a stage where I was just about to beat him and he pulled a hamstring. And

Speaker 2 I got home, I said, I was over the other side of the court and I said, Dad, don't, don't, you dare. And he said, I can't help it.
It's gone. Anyway, we get back and I, you know,

Speaker 2 he's carried on this thing for ages. And then I've got back and I've sat down

Speaker 2 and then he's just gone, you still never beat me, no have you.

Speaker 2 And I was like, oh, you know, and we never played again. Never played again.
That was it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But, you know, I don't know if I'll go that far, but I would, I definitely think that there is a, there is a lesson in, you know,

Speaker 2 you need to learn to, yeah, I think, I think, to, to lose, and then it definitely means more when you win because you've earned it.

Speaker 1 So those players, the ones that you'd say are sort of top of the top elite, I mean, you know, even from the outside, somebody that I've caught a bit of a glimpse of this would be Cristiano Ronaldo,

Speaker 1 as far as I can see. How old is he? 41? 42? 40? Something like that? Yeah.
And still looks fantastic, still very aggressive with that.

Speaker 1 I don't know how balanced, at least some of the stuff I've seen, it seems, oh, like this guy's got, but he's also got like an infinity team powering him and this big engine that's behind him.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I think that that was in him. That was in him very early.
I've played against Cristiano when no one knew who he was. We had Charisma on one wing and Ronaldo was on the other.

Speaker 2 And Portugal versus England under 21s, no one knew who he was. And oh my God, he was absolutely sensational, as you can imagine.
I mean, he was the tricks, the flicks, he was a machine.

Speaker 2 And then he came to Manchester United. I remember Rio telling me,

Speaker 2 you know, and this was very early on. I mean, he must have been 21, 22.

Speaker 2 And, you know, he's not even barely kicks a ball in the Premier League. And he's telling Rio and, you know, various other people in the team that he wants to be the best player in the world.

Speaker 2 And I think, you know, that

Speaker 2 takes a certain type of person to say that when you're so far away from being there,

Speaker 2 you've got amazing talent. You've, you know, you've got definitely got the ability to get there.

Speaker 2 But the fact that he was saying that at such an early age, he had one goal, and that was to be the best player on the planet. And then to achieve it is incredible.

Speaker 1 How receptive are

Speaker 1 players to that kind of bravado? Because I think when you talk about, again, solo sport, UFC, right?

Speaker 1 You think that Conor McGregor's of the world, the best shit talkers in the world, Kobe Covington, whatever. You go, I mean, he can do what you want.
Maybe your coach will say,

Speaker 1 you idiot, you shouldn't have said that. But really, there's no one else that you're at the mercy of.

Speaker 1 And it's a a really really good point uh kind of the same the difference between being uh taylor swift and the ollie sykes the lead singer of bring me the horizon if you do or say a thing

Speaker 1 as a solo artist fine it's on your shoulders if you do or say a thing with the rest of the bandmates you know you now need to go and answer to them on the bus or in the dressing room or whatever so if

Speaker 1 i imagine that teams want confident players because a good player will help the performance of the team.

Speaker 1 But there's there's this trade-off between how much that person gets to capture the limelight and how much that person steals all of the attention. And there's this battle between the two things.

Speaker 1 So, is there a concern about someone getting too big for their boots?

Speaker 1 What is the reception of somebody that's got bravado like that?

Speaker 2 Well, the thing is, listen, I've played with other players as well who've probably said the same thing and got nowhere near it, you know, and obviously they get ridiculed for it.

Speaker 2 I think it's good to have.

Speaker 2 I think, you know, there are certain players like, you know, Zlatan Ibrunovich, someone who's outspoken but backs it up and I think there's nothing better than and there's nothing we love more than someone Floyd Mayweather you know someone at the top of their game who talks the talk but backs it up with results and I think you know we've in sports especially like I love all sports and the characters are the people that make it right the people that say they're going to do something and then they do it is just and you know because the whole you know there's that everyone watching once they say they're going to do something that everyone wants them to fail.

Speaker 2 Um, it's that there's something, certainly in this country, in England, we are

Speaker 2 we absolutely love people failing. Someone said to me, I remember like buying a nice car.
If you buy a nice car in England, people want to kick it.

Speaker 2 You know, if you're in America or the US, we'll celebrate the fact that you've done well, you know, but there's something about that in this country that I like.

Speaker 1 Um, it's definitely not going to let you get too big for your boots, yeah.

Speaker 2 There you go. And I think, you know, Cristiano would have been ridiculed at that age.
There's players far more on a, on a,

Speaker 2 far more ahead of him at that time, but the fact that he had that goal and achieved it is something you've got to respect.

Speaker 1 What did being inside of Premier League dressing rooms teach you about masculinity?

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, I mean, a hell of a lot. Like, you had to go, I had to grow up very quickly.

Speaker 2 I mean, I remember being 14. I mean,

Speaker 2 it's a totally different time now, but I mean, some of the dressing rooms I was in in that age, and you're playing with kind of men you know and I kind of didn't I didn't develop till a little bit later you know I'm 14 15 very skinny very tall

Speaker 2 and I'm I'm in dressing room with with men who you know just hard men you know and like the coaches were were incredibly tough you know like

Speaker 2 what youth setup were you in I was at I was at QPR for a little while And then I went to Tottenham when Jerry Francis moved. And then I ended up back at QPR and I made my debut.

Speaker 2 But yeah, I was at Tottenham and it was hard. And also, you know, I grew up in quite a nice environment, you know, and, you know, my dad obviously said to me quite often, I was too nice.

Speaker 2 I had to, I had to change, I had to be someone different on the pitch

Speaker 2 because I'm playing an environment where, you know, people are fighting for their lives, you know, and they're, you know, that tackle that means something to me is life or death to them.

Speaker 2 Do you know what I mean? So I had to make that life or death for me.

Speaker 2 So I had to just change my mentality, be a different person when I went over the white line line and changed the kind of character I am off the field.

Speaker 2 Kind of always tried to remain the person that I was, but just be a different person on the pitch.

Speaker 2 And I think that environment definitely helped me

Speaker 2 certainly become the, yeah, become the person and the

Speaker 2 and the player that I was, definitely.

Speaker 1 I played a lot of cricket as a kid. I played for to a pretty high standard.
I played for Durham and then I did some training stuff with England. And that's the same.

Speaker 1 I mean, even maybe younger, because the thing that you get to do with cricket as a sport, which isn't as much about physicality and is much more about technique, you can as a 13 I started playing adults at 13 and you know, I'd be playing maybe

Speaker 1 fourths at 13, and then I'd probably start.

Speaker 1 I think I had my first seconds game when I was 14, and then you know, you're playing twos and ones, and then you're going to play, you're already playing county at youth setup, and then you're playing, you know, Durham Academy, Durham Seconds.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 yeah, you're right, you're 14 years old in communal showers with guys.

Speaker 1 And another

Speaker 1 interesting

Speaker 1 quirk in the game of cricket is that you're in the pavilion for 50% of the game, unless you're batting.

Speaker 1 Your time in the dressing room is maybe more than any other sport except for baseball. But the difference with baseball being that their dressing room is on the pitch.

Speaker 1 So it doesn't have as much privacy. So yeah, it's a real fucking baptism of fire.
You know, there was one day where my head got shaved.

Speaker 1 Like I was in, you know, I'm in the pavilion and my dad saw me go into the dressing room with hair. And then by the time that we'd finished batting, we hadn't lost too many wickets.

Speaker 1 So no one had come out. I came out without hair.

Speaker 2 Other guys had the exact same thing. I went on to a,

Speaker 2 we played the Milk Cup in Ireland, but we were still at school. I was I was playing the under 16s and

Speaker 2 that team, those lads, they had already gone full-time.

Speaker 2 So like I was still at school and we were kind of part-time. So they had a real tight bond.
And then we were like three players who were playing a year above.

Speaker 2 You can only imagine, you know, we were the whipping boys, right? So, yeah, it was like, I don't want to have my head shaved. Well, that's not an option.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, you get your head shaved and you kind of muck in and you want to, but you're not really kind of on the inside of it.

Speaker 2 And I found that tough at first, but you know, I think to myself, God, it would have been easier to stay at home and not go to training.

Speaker 2 But, you know, getting through that and overcoming those things is definitely a feather in your cap. And I think it, you know, it is such an old school way of looking at things.

Speaker 2 And, you know, the coaches were so hard on you. And it was whether or not you could sink or switch.
It was basically, look, are you hard enough to deal with this? Yeah.

Speaker 2 And they were overly tough on you. But I do think, you know, I know it's a bit old school and we can't do that now, but I do think

Speaker 2 it did make me stronger. And, you know, the fact that there were certainly some players who would sit here with you now and say it was bullying, it was terrible because they didn't make it.

Speaker 2 They were selected out. Yeah, and they did find that tough and they couldn't deal with it.
And I totally understand why.

Speaker 2 But the fact that I did manage to overcome those hurdles definitely made me stronger

Speaker 2 mentally and definitely made me, I think,

Speaker 2 stronger for everything that life throws at you.

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Speaker 1 What about

Speaker 1 masculinity and that sort of male posturing thing when you get to everybody being a professional player?

Speaker 1 I have no idea what this looks like inside of the dressing room or on the training ground. Lots of big squat, big-ish squads, you know, good bunch of physios, some SNCs, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 There's like a big group of people that are all moving around.

Speaker 1 It's a basketball team. She's got a much smaller team and squad size.

Speaker 1 What's that like? What does masculinity in professional football look like?

Speaker 2 Well, it's incredible.

Speaker 2 it's how you imagine it i think it's very kind of macho dog eat dog world you know i think people want to take your place um you know any weakness is preyed upon um the if you look at the masculinity side of it i suppose it's very much um you know we you you have to man up basically and i think uh certainly things you know nowadays it's a lot it's a lot better but you know if i went in to see the manager and said you know i'm struggling a little bit mentally it'd be like well you you dropped then, you know, you obviously

Speaker 2 can't deal with it. You can't, you know, that kind of struggle, I think it's very, it was very old school.
I think it's very different now.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I wouldn't show any weakness whatsoever. Even if I was feeling down about anything, you just don't show it.

Speaker 2 And I think that was, you know, kind of environment that I grew up in and the environment that I played in.

Speaker 2 But I do think. I do think it's much better now.
And, you know, certainly men in general talk about things more now, don't they?

Speaker 2 Is that the same inside of the dressing room have you got any indication that it's changed when it gets to football yeah i think so i think i think it's a lot more accommodating than you would expect now i think you know it's very multicultural like you know everyone's very from very different walks of life um all over the world um different beliefs religions um

Speaker 2 you know certainly when i was in the youth team and coming through it was very english

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 kind of British culture that was policing.

Speaker 1 It's superbly diverse now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's what I mean. I think, you know, there's,

Speaker 2 I think, all corners of the globe is covered in the dressing room now.

Speaker 2 And I think certainly when I was coming through that, that kind of British, it was this macho, almost drinking culture, if you like.

Speaker 2 I think that's gone up.

Speaker 1 Talking about diversity, there are no publicly gay Premier League players. Each Premier League club can register a squad of up to 25 players plus unlimited under 21s.

Speaker 1 20 clubs, that's 500 registered first-team first-team players at any given time.

Speaker 1 If you include all of the under-21s who make senior appearances, the number rises to about 600 to 650 active players across the season.

Speaker 1 Currently, zero active Premier League male players are publicly out as gay. Statistically speaking, there should be 20 to 35.
Same in La Liga, same in the German league, same in the French league.

Speaker 1 And there is one gay guy in Serie A in Italy.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 2 I could not tell you. I think, I genuinely think now if someone came out as gay in a dressing room, I think they'd be very well supported.
I think in those in the Premier League dresser room.

Speaker 2 Yeah, of course you're going to have idiots in the crowd. I think people that

Speaker 2 are, you know, maybe stuck in the dark ages. We've seen it with racism.
You know, it's still not completely kicked out, is it?

Speaker 2 I think, you know, we've seen an incident recently at the Liverpool match with Bournemouth

Speaker 2 that proves that. I think it's got far better.
I think

Speaker 2 there's still a way to go.

Speaker 2 But with regards to someone coming out, I genuinely believe that

Speaker 2 if there is someone out there, you would urge them to come forward. And if they want to, and of course, it's their decision because if they don't want to, that's totally their decision as well.
But

Speaker 2 I do think it would be well supported.

Speaker 2 As regards to why, I mean, I played with Thomas Hitselberger, who has come out as gay. I played with him at Aston Villa.
Villa, but

Speaker 2 he felt he couldn't come out at the time

Speaker 2 for whatever reason. He came out afterwards.
But I see, I've spoken to Thomas, and

Speaker 2 he's felt very well supported since he has come out. So it's just a shame he didn't do it while he was playing.
Yeah, I mean, it's a good point.

Speaker 1 It's your choice. You don't need to.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 You are a professional athlete. I do not need to know about your sexuality.
Absolutely. That being said,

Speaker 1 people talk a lot about lots of things that they're getting up to, right?

Speaker 1 This is my new car that I've just bought, and this is my new dog, and I just got married, and I did whatever. And yeah, if we've got this, you know, 600 to 650

Speaker 1 player ecosystem that exists in the Premier League each year, which is cycling through, right? That's not fixed. That's, you know, over the last decade with...

Speaker 1 people moving in and out, you're talking maybe close to 2,000, maybe 3,000.

Speaker 1 And if you were to look at sort of the rates of how often you would assume there would be at least one gay player in this group, you're talking 20 to 35 people, and it's none.

Speaker 1 And regardless of whether the locker room and the press and your fans would be fine with that, or maybe even like in support of that, maybe it would be even be a positive.

Speaker 1 There is evidently something, true or not, that is lingering to cause those players.

Speaker 1 It's almost 100% a guarantee that

Speaker 1 there is not no gay players in the Premier League. So it has to be either they're focused on being professional.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe. But I get the sense that given I feel completely liberated to talk about whatever I want, most players might actually like to have their sexuality out there, but they don't.

Speaker 1 So whether it's real or imagined, there's something lingering, I think, that's causing guys, because it's not the same in rugby.

Speaker 1 I don't know whether it would be the same in cricket. I wonder as well, you mentioned before about the class thing.

Speaker 1 I wonder how much of this is because football is still very much dominated by working class in a way that rugby perhaps isn't the same, in the way that cricket perhaps isn't the same.

Speaker 1 Tennis, also not the same.

Speaker 1 So yeah, maybe it's a class thing too.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but perhaps. I mean, I don't know.
I mean,

Speaker 2 I've spoken to Thomas about it and you know, he felt he didn't, he wanted to concentrate on his football. He felt

Speaker 2 a lot of a distraction to him. He also thought, you know, I don't know what the fallout's going to be because no one's really done it while they've been playing at the top level.

Speaker 2 So yeah, it's a difficult one to navigate.

Speaker 2 But I genuinely think, you know, from everyone I've been involved, been involved in football a lot time, a long time now.

Speaker 2 And I do think that there would would be a tremendous amount of support for someone that did

Speaker 1 maybe interesting when it happens there would be like a really kind of a monumental moment when that does happen yeah I mean you know like you say the

Speaker 2 the statistics or the the the the chance of it happening is

Speaker 2 you would expect it to to to happen but um no it hasn't done so far but uh you know i think it would be uh probably a good thing for the game when it when it does

Speaker 1 what was it you were saying dean about uh

Speaker 1 there's only one guy in formula one as well yes yeah yeah yeah so you know you pick your

Speaker 1 pick your favorite sport of choice and uh

Speaker 1 i don't know it's it's strange to me uh not to harp on the sort of pride acceptance thing but um

Speaker 1 people that criticize pride even my gay friends that criticize pride and they're like okay we've done like you know we've sort of owned all of the different territory that we need to.

Speaker 1 And I think in many ways,

Speaker 1 brands change their display photos on Twitter to have a rainbow behind them for Pride Month and all the rest of the stuff. Like, you know, that looks like it's pretty well conquered to me.

Speaker 1 But then when we look at elite sport,

Speaker 1 the numbers don't really seem to stack up.

Speaker 1 So it seems like, you know, there kind of is work to be done in some of these ways. Or maybe it's the case that all players.
Actually, that's another good point. I'm talking against myself here.

Speaker 1 I'll let you know when I'm done.

Speaker 1 I'm just having an argument over here.

Speaker 1 How many players, straight players, do you know about what they're doing with their relationship?

Speaker 2 Well, that's what I mean. Like, if I'm a footballer, I know how I feel, right? And if I was gay, I think I'd be quite open about it.
But I don't think I would be shouting it from the rooftops either.

Speaker 2 Like, I'm not going to do a press conference and say, you know, my sexual preferences.

Speaker 2 Like, I'm there.

Speaker 1 If you went out and Jamie Carrey goes, like, right, Peter, we reunite.

Speaker 2 I just want to get this on. Don't say much.

Speaker 1 Don't say much. And you go out and you go, my sexual preferences, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 1 That's what I mean.

Speaker 2 We're there to play football, you know? And I think, of course,

Speaker 2 if someone is gay,

Speaker 2 I'd love them to feel comfortable enough to come out if they want to. But having said that,

Speaker 2 we're not there for that.

Speaker 2 I'm not there to broadcast what, you know, my preferences are. I'm there to play football.
I'm there to do a job, something that I love doing. And actually,

Speaker 2 that might take something away from the job that I'm. It's certainly going to be a distraction.
You know, and I think, you know, we're all professional.

Speaker 2 I think footballers just want to get on with playing and do something they love and done since they were a kid. And that potentially could be a distraction.

Speaker 2 So if there are people out there that, you know, don't feel that they want to come out that, then that's totally fine as well.

Speaker 1 Interesting. We were saying before about how previously there was a disadvantage because you didn't have a direct route to be able to broadcast what it is that you've got going on.

Speaker 1 And in many ways, that was a weakness. But now that it's an availability, there's almost this sense of like entitlement or obligation.
It's like, well, tell me, tell me what you've got going on.

Speaker 1 Is that a new car? What happened with the dog?

Speaker 1 Like, how's the dog doing? You know, has it been spayed yet? Like,

Speaker 1 there's this

Speaker 1 necessity for everything to be keeping up with the Kardashians.

Speaker 2 Well, I've found this myself. Like,

Speaker 2 because I do a podcast with my wife and,

Speaker 2 you know, the stuff that we talk about at home, quite often we talk about on the podcast.

Speaker 2 But I've kind of blurred the lines a little bit now where i'm like people will come up to me and be oh how's how's kaz doing you know that's like abby's friend you know talk about the dog and i'm like how do you know these things and i just forget i did it yeah we we've we've talked about it right and because we're sitting there on our couch we do it at home the stuff that we say you know i forget sometimes what's out there and what's not and you know people will come up to us in the in a supermarket and say things about our lives and i'll be like how the hell and then it just dawned on me me that the fact that we've talked last week's yeah, yeah, exactly right.

Speaker 2 Um, but but I enjoy it, and people seem to enjoy it with us. So the more that you know, the more that that can continue, the better, because we love doing it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, going back to the sort of football culture thing,

Speaker 1 it certainly seemed like if you're a very successful player, Ronaldo-esque, you can get away with a little bit more.

Speaker 1 Does that

Speaker 1 encourage or tend teams who are winning to continue to sort of

Speaker 1 turn the screw of maybe toxic culture in terms of work rate, how hard and unforgiving people are, that sort of backbiting

Speaker 1 ruthlessness, which doesn't necessarily bind a team together. It's 11 individuals or a 25 squad group of individuals as opposed to a 25 squad group that are all working together.
But if

Speaker 1 everything is going well and you're moving up through the rankings,

Speaker 1 everyone's sort of we don't want to change what appears to be working at the moment. I have to assume that success permits things to become a little bit more extreme in that way.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think I've actually been in both scenarios. You know, the site that when you're losing games, that can be obviously very toxic as well.

Speaker 2 But, but also winning games as well, like the players that aren't playing,

Speaker 2 that kind of atmosphere. Like, I don't envy managers trying to deal with so many big personalities and

Speaker 2 I think nowadays it's very much more like the players will let their agents deal with with not playing and things like that but

Speaker 2 back I think when I was playing it was definitely much you'd knock on the door of the manager and you'd have to direct relationship you'd have a direct relationship it's like why am I not playing and you know you'd have to

Speaker 2 agent now that speaks to the manager yeah I mean I've seen things now that I'm I'm basically I'm glad that I kind of got out when I did I when I was 37 38 I was still playing and I just saw you know agents up in the in the in the canteen every day you know going in to see why a player wasn't playing or

Speaker 2 and I've just been like why can't you just go and do it you said you just go and knock on the door and

Speaker 2 yeah a hell of a lot more now

Speaker 2 and I think players hide behind their agents a little bit now

Speaker 2 which is a shame

Speaker 2 and yeah they've got a they've got a role to play agents but I do think those conversations did you

Speaker 2 know know,

Speaker 2 certainly you can have them yourself with the manager. But with regards to that toxic atmosphere, yeah, definitely when you're losing games, that can be really bad.

Speaker 2 Everyone pointing fingers, no one wants to look in the mirror. And there were certain

Speaker 2 players, individuals, where you just be like,

Speaker 2 the other thing is when you're losing

Speaker 2 and people aren't playing,

Speaker 2 with social media now, you can put out, I mean, I've watched one certain player do nothing in training.

Speaker 2 he'd be the last in, he'd be the first out every single day. He wouldn't even tie his laces when he was training.
And then go home and he'd have someone filming him on Instagram.

Speaker 2 He's running up some stairs.

Speaker 2 He's running around his drive and he's doing shuttles and all the fans are like, why is he not playing?

Speaker 2 He's working even harder.

Speaker 2 Look how hard he's working.

Speaker 1 He's not doing anything. He's not doing anything in training.

Speaker 2 I'm like,

Speaker 2 but you know, that just shows you that. how the wool can be pulled over fans' eyes and you know that you're not really getting the the full story.

Speaker 2 this is another disadvantage of that direct form of communication yeah yeah they can counter negative headlines in the press but they can also sell the fans a complete lie about how hard they're they're working a completely different story and you know that's that's actually fascinating yeah like the the back so we say back stronger on my podcast and it's very much like we say that because it was just a loose term on people's social media that used to wind me up so much what back stronger right everyone used to say it and it was like a hashtag it was like you can write the the the the the tweet or or the Instagram message of every player who's ever lived, right?

Speaker 2 When they've played and they've lost away from home, it was like,

Speaker 2 sorry, we let you down. The fans were terrific today.
We'll be back stronger next week, right?

Speaker 2 We used to laugh at that because I'd just be like, who are you trying to kid with this message?

Speaker 2 You've barely tried.

Speaker 2 We've got pumped and you're trying to say, you've been coating the fans off to everyone on the changer and saying how bad they were.

Speaker 1 And then it's the, you know, the generic is diplomacy out front.

Speaker 2 The generic message. And the worst thing is you see the replies after and there's fans that are buying into it.
And I think, yeah, I think it's definitely,

Speaker 2 I think people are kind of cottoned on to the, to the fact that, you know, you can't pull the wool over these people's eyes.

Speaker 2 But for a long time, that was going on and it was, it was frustrating the life out of me.

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Speaker 1 Is being funny a way of hiding how much the game hurts? Or is it a performance enhancer to kind of

Speaker 1 regulate when stuff's getting a little bit stressful?

Speaker 2 Well, for me personally,

Speaker 1 a coping mechanism or a performance enhancer.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it started as that, you know, like it started as

Speaker 2 as a defense mechanism um i just looked different i didn't look like a any normal footballer um you know i've talked about this before but i you know all my heroes didn't look like me and um i was kind of i mean there were certain players that you know were taller but you know i wanted to go past players i wanted to i wanted to have a good time i wanted to i wanted to do skills i wanted to score great volleys i wanted to score you know I wanted to do things that, you know, players, but players didn't look like me were doing.

Speaker 2 And I think, yeah, certainly at school, you know, in that harsh environment of football,

Speaker 2 looking different and trying to fit in are two different things. So

Speaker 2 yeah, humor became a defense mechanism, became something that I managed to,

Speaker 2 you know, if someone wanted to say something negative about me, I would say it funnier and quicker than they than they were going to.

Speaker 2 And I think that kind of stood me in really good stead in life, really. So I think that's how my character developed, really.

Speaker 2 And then it was like, well, I'm not going to say anything because he's going to be sharper and quicker and finally with whatever he's going to say. So that stopped very quickly.

Speaker 2 And I think certainly the harsh environment with fans, I think, you know, I came out and, you know, I'd laugh at myself before someone else could laugh at me.

Speaker 2 And I think something that started as a defense mechanism then kind of became my superpower.

Speaker 2 I think after football, it then became, oh, God, there's a, you know, there's a footballer that can have a laugh. He can laugh at himself in an environment that

Speaker 2 is very take yourself seriously.

Speaker 2 It's very, you know, how good can we look how polished can we look i think yeah it might have been a quite a refreshing change for people that oh there's someone here that's doing doing well he's successful but he can also take the piss out of himself um which was you know for me sitting here now it doesn't seem groundbreaking but i think certainly when i was playing it it did it did feel a touch groundbreaking what gets considerably better about life when you stop playing

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 it's hard i mean, it's a tough one to stop because it's all you've ever known, right? And since you were a child. Yeah.
I think when I first retired, I was very much like, oh, I'm my own boss now.

Speaker 2 I can do whatever I like. I can, you know, go on a holiday at Christmas.
Things like that. I can, you know, do something on a Saturday.

Speaker 2 You know, there's certain little things like that. Like,

Speaker 2 the first Christmas dinner was amazing. Like, genuinely, as a footballer, I'm in a hotel New Year's Eve.
Didn't see New Year in ever. I'd been asleep by 10 o'clock

Speaker 2 Christmas Day very much like

Speaker 2 yeah I'd train Christmas Day

Speaker 2 I mean you know I'd have a sandwich for like turkey sandwich maybe that was about it I'd eat pasta chick dry chicken I wouldn't I wouldn't have a Christmas dinner certainly no alcohol because we'd play 26th 28th 1st um you know seventh there'd be consistent games over Christmas so yeah that that first when i retired it was like right i'm gonna go for it christmas day and i did you know

Speaker 2 um my stomach didn't know what oh my god i ate what you know what i could i drank a hell of a lot and i had a great time but then that wears thin right you're like after the first christmas yeah that was a that was that was great i'd rather be playing i genuinely would rather be doing what i love doing i mean going actually thinking about it now the christmas day training game it was the some of the best times i've ever had in my life why just no one on the road everyone's with you know with the families.

Speaker 2 And I love my family to bits, but it's nice getting away from them sometimes.

Speaker 2 Just getting that fresh air, playing a sport when everyone else is sitting around hungover, you are, you're ready to go.

Speaker 1 You're getting after it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's it, there is something smug about being so fit in a, in a time.

Speaker 1 Self-righteousness was as nourishing as the Christmas meal.

Speaker 2 Almost so, yeah. And I think being my own boss was lovely, but I'll be honest with you, I work better in a, in a kind of regimental environment.

Speaker 1 Me too. Me too.
It's a

Speaker 1 It's so trite, right? But the reason that clichés exist is because they seem to be sticky enough to be fucking accurate.

Speaker 1 Grass always been greener. You know, you, when you were on the training ground, not fully appreciating how nice it was, fresh cold air, like that snappy British cold air, 9 a.m.
in the morning.

Speaker 1 It's nice, right? It fills your lungs up. And at the same time, you're like, oh,

Speaker 1 our national sport is complaining. It's complaining first and football second.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you want to be, I wish I could have should have laid in this morning. The kids are going to be a nightmare when I get back.
Oh, the missus is going to be meh meh meh meh, meh.

Speaker 1 Not even going to get to get a roast today. You know,

Speaker 1 like just as you're waiting to do drills and everyone's chirping away, like just in a little kit, like the classic thing. And then as soon as you finish up, what is it that you miss?

Speaker 1 You miss the thing that's on the other side. So

Speaker 1 I think that, to be honest, I think that that's kind of the perennial condition for humans across everything.

Speaker 1 You're

Speaker 1 deep in university and you just wish that you could get out. I'm so bored of this lecture.
I'm so bored. This course is stupid.

Speaker 1 And then you get into employment, whatever career you go into, and you go, I wish that I was, you know, I remember when I used to go back to lectures and we'd sit at the back and just be able to chill out and we'd be able to have snake bite in the union at 11 in the morning on a Tuesday.

Speaker 1 Like, wasn't that cool? And then you get out of that and you're like, I just really want to have a family. I spend all of this time on my own.
I want to have a partner.

Speaker 1 And then you have to sleep in bed next to someone and they're too hot all the time. You're like, fuck, I just wish I was on my own again.

Speaker 1 You missed have a family, and then you start to have a family, and you're like, fuck, I just wish I could sleep in on a morning.

Speaker 1 The kids are bouncing everywhere, and then you're sick of your job, and you want to retire, and then you retire, and you think, fuck, I wish I was back at work. And this is, I think,

Speaker 1 the perennial human condition all the way through.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 humor laughing at kind of the absurdity of it all,

Speaker 1 I think, is a pretty good prophylactic against that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think

Speaker 2 we do complain. And as footballers, we complain about the smallest things.
You know, if one thing was wrong, we were on it.

Speaker 1 You know, what are some of the more silly complaints that you can recall?

Speaker 2 Mainly about sessions. You know, like I did my coaching badges when I retired and I got up to kind of UA5A license.
And my respect for coaches and managers now is just through the roof.

Speaker 2 You know, and I and I think about what I was like and what we were like, two coaches.

Speaker 2 If one, if he got one number wrong or gave the wrong bib to someone or, you know, the cone was out of place, we were on him, right? It was like, oh my God, this is a shambles, you know,

Speaker 2 you're a disgrace. You can't manage.
You can't coach. Genuinely, that's the slightest thing.
And then I think about it now when I was in that environment of being a coach and I think, this is hard.

Speaker 2 This is tough. How you get a thankless task.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 How you get all these egos in one in various positions and pull them around and tell them what to do is is an incredible feat, really so my respect went so so through the roof for coaches when I did my verges

Speaker 1 yeah I mean I remember the same thing with cricket that it is

Speaker 1 I think maybe a little bit of it is trying to invert some of the power that you know there's a power imbalance that these are the guys who in some form or another are kind of in charge of life or death for you and you are being held to a high standard.

Speaker 1 you know, it's the same as it's the same as seeing a police officer texting while he drives, and you go, Hey,

Speaker 1 I know you're going to enforce this on me, so this is my opportunity to be self-righteous and very British about it. You know, everybody turns into cycling Mikey when uh

Speaker 2 when they're

Speaker 2 100%,

Speaker 2 I'd love to say that.

Speaker 2 I would tell him as well,

Speaker 1 and uh, yeah, I think I think part of it is we're gonna revert, we're gonna invert this power imbalance between the two of us.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I think the humor thing, okay, this is absurd and

Speaker 1 it's difficult to do in the moment because we, especially even you, a more laissez-faire philosophy when it came to the way that you played than maybe the more kind of intense negatively focused guys will still have been focusing on a lot of the negatives of how can I get better and where should I improve and so on and so forth.

Speaker 1 If that's the case, you know that there are going to be things in this situation that in future you're going to look back on with fondness and you know that there are uh and those are things that you're ignoring right now and you also know that whatever it is that you want you're going to pick holes in that thing in future so

Speaker 1 maybe trying to be a little bit less uh

Speaker 1 confident in what you think is what you want you know you're like i i just think i'm doing this thing right now and i'll just make you know i've been whining this week you're the ninth ninth episode in this location, it's been so much fun and beautiful.

Speaker 1 And my favorite location of anywhere I've filmed over, you know, like a thousand episodes. The seat's not that comfortable.

Speaker 1 I've been sat in a seat like 25 hours this week, and I've got this like little bruise on my lower back. And I'm getting in at a nighttime, I'm like, oh, my back hurts, like my lower back hurts.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to remember the fucking bruise on my back in six minutes' time, but I'll remember how much fun it was to be here with the guys and

Speaker 1 to do ad reads and throw AG1 and element packets around and stuff like that, you know. So

Speaker 2 just

Speaker 1 again, I wonder, I don't, I'm sure that this is kind of, like I say, a perennial human issue, but I think it's a distinctively British brand of it as well. Like

Speaker 1 the complaining, like cycling Mikey

Speaker 1 dynamic is like a particular thing. So just trying to keep that in mind, I think might be a nice way for people to let go of that stress.

Speaker 2 I think the character thing, like

Speaker 2 you mentioned there,

Speaker 2 I think being adaptable is the thing that I think

Speaker 2 we forget about. I think people have these goals, like you say, and you set the goals and if you don't reach them,

Speaker 2 it's a failure. You know, whereas I'll have a goal and

Speaker 2 I've had it my whole life, really. My ultimate goal was football.
But then when I retired, I was like, right, what do I do now?

Speaker 2 And it was a real worry to be, you know, kind of jobless and think to myself, you know, how am I going to keep myself busy?

Speaker 2 And I might have a goal, but that goal for me would change every

Speaker 2 turn. I mean, like, it's a kind of

Speaker 2 a tree, I suppose, and then the branches keep coming off. And you're like, oh, I'll follow this one.

Speaker 2 And I think, you know, people have always said to me, like, you know, yeah, I've been lucky enough to have quite a successful career after football, but

Speaker 2 it wasn't structured or thought out. It was very much like, that's an opportunity.
I'll take that.

Speaker 2 You know, that's another opportunity.

Speaker 2 I'll do that. And I think, you know, I was lucky the fact that those opportunities arose, But

Speaker 2 I do think being adaptable and taking your mind off the ultimate goal at times.

Speaker 2 And, you know, there'd be plenty of elite people that you speak to who said, I have one laser focus that I hone in on, right? Well, that's not my way. That wasn't my way and isn't my way.
I think,

Speaker 2 yeah, I had a focus, I have a goal, but I also kind of can adapt to situations and make the best of the situation you are, you're given.

Speaker 1 I always felt

Speaker 2 not

Speaker 1 not quite like a fraud but certainly like uh

Speaker 1 insufficient by the standards that i knew were supposed to be gold standard and i started doing the show a lot of it was about productivity it's been going seven years and um seven nearly eight actually

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 when i first started you know i was 30 and um i'm like this adult infant trying to wrangle my life into order a little bit I was at university, full-time union till I was 24.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I spent, I spent a long time like on the train tracks, not too dissimilar to you, although you kept going a lot longer. And then you step off and you're freewheeling, no idea how to drive.

Speaker 1 And I'm trying to get my life in order. And a big part of it is, okay, so you need a 25-year plan.

Speaker 1 It's broken down into five-year periods and it's one-year like chunks and it's 90-day sprints and it's daily actions and you know, and you sort of,

Speaker 1 and I had no, I just couldn't seem to get any further than about six months out I couldn't ever really see much further and I was like oh god I supposed to have a plan I'm supposed to know where I'm going and all the rest of it and um I understand why especially if you've got a a little bit of a nervous disposition or you prefer a bit more order instead of chaos or structure like you do and I do too

Speaker 1 Because without the structure,

Speaker 1 everything's a little bit scary and sort of, I I don't really know how the fuck it's going to go.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I don't think that that's necessarily a sort of less viable approach for doing things.

Speaker 1 And especially if you are planning on stuff going very well, which everybody hopes that it's going to, you know what happens.

Speaker 1 If the line starts to go vertical in whatever industry it is that you're doing,

Speaker 1 the options that come out, it's stuff that you didn't even know, that you didn't even know existed.

Speaker 1 You go, well, how was I supposed to prepare for this thing that I wasn't even aware, that I wasn't even aware was an option? Like, oh my God.

Speaker 1 So in that case, the plan would be out of the window within, within six months. Oh, I've got my 25-year, five-year, blah, blah, blah.
You're like, okay, six months into this,

Speaker 1 2026.

Speaker 2 It's like, fuck, it's out the window.

Speaker 1 So I think being adaptable and being flexible and not.

Speaker 1 not feeling too bad. Oh, I don't have a plan.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do. It's like, all right, are you talented? Do you work hard and are you consistent?

Speaker 1 You probably don't need to worry all that much.

Speaker 2 I was just thinking, like, obviously, the way I was in football is the way I've carried it on into my life after football is that I think you do have to enjoy the journey.

Speaker 2 And I think, yeah, people might be laser focused, they might be more successful than me,

Speaker 2 but I know it doesn't make them happier than me, right? And I think, what is success in life, right? It's surely to me, it's it's happiness, right? And if I'm happy, yeah, I might not be as

Speaker 2 elite or won as many things as certain people, but I've been happy the whole way along doing it. And again, now

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 I do things that I enjoy. And I'm obviously very lucky that I've got the opportunity to do that.
But

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 because I enjoy it, I think people kind of enjoy it with me.

Speaker 1 Well, it's also enabled you, the enjoyment of you doing the thing has enabled new things. Because you're having fun along the way.
It's opened up these options.

Speaker 1 There are certain things that you can sort of grit your teeth through in a way.

Speaker 1 And and i think that going from elite sport what's interesting going from elite sport where you're almost encouraged to ignore your emotions in uh in replacement of the performance to what you do now which is your emotions are the performance the better your mood the better the outcome for you having a chat or feeling relaxed or coming in here and having a laugh and you know wow does that memory that far feel like in a good place with chris today i'm energized and my brain's working like because i slept last night because i wasn't too stressed as opposed to it doesn't matter how you feel, get on the pitch, run fast and kick the ball in the goal.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 I think it's a different sort of skill set, one that requires you to feel good. I think about this with comedians all the time.

Speaker 1 You know, your job is to go on stage and bring a vibe and make people laugh. So you have maybe

Speaker 1 a therapist perhaps would be, would be something similar. You know, you need to be attuned and regulated.

Speaker 1 If you're spending all of your time having an argument with your missus,

Speaker 1 how are you supposed to turn up and do your thing? And I'm aware that that's going to be difficult as a football player too. I'm sure that turning up after you've had a fight with the bird is not.

Speaker 2 You know, bizarrely, that is actually

Speaker 2 the best football I ever played was when I was having problems off.

Speaker 1 It's a performance enhancement. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 For me, it was, yeah. I was like...
Do you think that was you too? Do you know why? Because it's a safe place.

Speaker 2 It's like, whatever's going on in the world, I'm going to go here and I'm going to play football.

Speaker 1 Sanctuary.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm going to get away from...

Speaker 2 And I think quite often with footballers in general, like quite often the players that I've met or been around have had tough upbringings, hard lives, and their escapism has always been go and kick a ball around, right?

Speaker 2 Whatever's going on in the house, you know, their mum might be arguing with their dad. There might be fights, you know, there's problems.
You go out, you kick a ball around, all that goes away.

Speaker 2 And genuinely, that's how I,

Speaker 2 how I felt. It was, if I had problems off the field, I'd go in there.

Speaker 2 And the moment, obviously, when I was playing professional football, football, the minute I drive through those gates, it's like I've left all those problems behind.

Speaker 2 It's like I've left them at the gate and now all I'm going to do is be a nine-year-old kid again. I'm going to go and play football with my mates.
I'm going to have a laugh.

Speaker 2 And then, yeah, there'll be a world of problems out there the minute I go through those games again.

Speaker 2 That's when I end up going to the gym and fucking, you know, eating. And then you're going to stay at the training ground until 5pm.

Speaker 1 Videoing it on Instagram. That's it, you know? Yeah.
Yeah, that's, I mean, maybe you're right. Maybe, maybe the comedians that are really struggling are able to find I think that's harder for them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're bringing an emotional vibe as opposed to kind of forgetting it. It's, you know, it's it's less embodied as well.

Speaker 1 I think the difference between, let's say, doing comedy and being a dancer, both people are on stage, both people need to bring a vibe, but one is getting to kind of like release some of that tension a little bit by moving their body.

Speaker 1 And same not true if you're if you're Jimmy Carr. Speaking of Jimmy Carr, though,

Speaker 1 his what is the meaning of life, his five-word thing,

Speaker 1 enjoying the passage of time and what you said about there are people who are maybe more successful than me but also more miserable or at the very least less happy

Speaker 1 you should be asking yourself a question what are you doing this for

Speaker 1 presumably it is something like enjoying the passage of time i'm trying to be successful so that i feel good like generally so that i feel good and if in the pursuit of being successful i make myself feel miserable you're sacrificing the thing that you want which is success for the thing which is supposed to get the thing that you want

Speaker 2 well that that that's it I think that's what work work in general is like I you know I I think obviously the financial gain and things like that is you know certainly people want money so they can provide a more comfortable happy lifestyle I think and you know if you can achieve that without

Speaker 2 without

Speaker 2 you know, working so hard or putting yourself through that pain,

Speaker 2 if it is pain or if it's hard, then if you you can achieve that, it's kind of almost like a cheat code, you if you're happy, you know, when when is it enough, you know, like how much do you need to be to be happy?

Speaker 2 I think um, everyone wants to be comfortable, of course, but I think people who are in a you know, a job that they don't like and you know, they feel like they have to do it, it's such a difficult space, especially in this day and age, for people to juggle.

Speaker 1 Well, there's a

Speaker 1 certainly a case where if you already live a comfortable life and are choosing to reduce your quality of life in order to make more money, then it's a bad trade.

Speaker 2 Yeah, totally disagree with that. I think

Speaker 2 the happiness is the most important thing. I think having a household that you enjoy coming back to is so important.

Speaker 2 You know, when you walk through the door, you're going like, oh, I've got to go in there.

Speaker 2 You know, because there are people that do that, you know, and thankfully I don't.

Speaker 2 I go home and I think I look around and i'm happy and i and i want you know i just hope you hope everyone else feels that way but you know it's it's hard and they you know they probably probably don't it's it's a difficult

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Speaker 1 talking about emotions and sort of casting that stuff off, how did you deal with anxiety, adrenaline, performance stress when you were playing?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 it's such a

Speaker 2 I've overcome it in lots of different ways, but

Speaker 2 the nervousness used to get to be bad.

Speaker 1 Like, I used to when were you most nervous?

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 2 I think I it mellowed towards the end of my career. Like certainly when I got to a level where I was comfortable, I was playing for Liverpool, I was playing for England,

Speaker 2 people knew who I was. So I didn't have to keep proving myself.
I think when I was young, I had to prove myself in every single match. It was very much like, he can't play.

Speaker 2 And I was like, I'll show you. That was my whole life until I was about 24.
And then when I was playing for England, when I was playing for Liverpool, everyone kind of, oh, he can play.

Speaker 2 I had to kind of stop. Obviously, I still had to keep proving myself, but it became a little bit easier.

Speaker 2 But the nervousness, yeah, I mean, in the early days, certainly my first. I mean, I remember I've told this story before, but I was on the

Speaker 2 first England squad and

Speaker 2 I was starting the game, and I remember we're going when the new Wembley was getting built, we were playing at Old Trafford, and I'm on the bus.

Speaker 2 And I've got, you know, I'm sitting next to Stephen Gerrard, Wayne Rooney's here, Rio Ferdinand, David Beckham, Gary Neville,

Speaker 2 Michael Owen, all you know, household names, right? I'm sitting on this bus. I'm just thinking to myself, I'm looking around, I'm going, right, I'm starting now for England at number nine.

Speaker 2 I'm looking around at all these players, I was thinking, you know, so basically, how did I get here? Number one, imposter syndrome.

Speaker 2 Yeah, a little bit, I was thinking, well, like, these players are, you know, I watch these on the TV, you know, yeah,

Speaker 2 world-class players, and now I'm one of them, right? And then I remember sitting down, I remember looking down at this pub, we were stuck in traffic on the way to Old Trafford.

Speaker 2 And there was a fella there with a, he had a pint and a paper. And I just thought,

Speaker 2 I'd love to be him right now.

Speaker 1 Any escape to get off the bus.

Speaker 2 Well, I just thought the nerves that were going through my body

Speaker 2 and I'm thinking the whole nation's watching this. All this stuff is going through my brain.
You know, all my friends and family,

Speaker 2 don't mess this up. I'm thinking, I'm looking at this fella now.
He's got a pint of Guinness. And he's not got a care in the world.
No pressure. No pressure.
But obviously that time,

Speaker 2 I would think, I wonder if I could swap with him. But then after the game,

Speaker 2 when you overcome those nerves and you've done well or you've scored and you've thought back to your thought process before the game and then the thought process after and the buzz, the natural high that I've got, you just wouldn't change it for anything.

Speaker 2 It's the best feeling that you could ever have and I've ever had in my life. And then, you know, and then the next game, I'm back to square one

Speaker 2 i'm i'm at that nervous energy again yeah but there's something special about it and you know i've managed to do it in my in my life since i think we did a show for uh the bbc and it was um

Speaker 2 for the euros it was and it was live just after every england game and um you know i was the host of it and uh it was you know someone was in your ear and basically i'm going live on bvc and i'm thinking there's millions going to be watching this and that adrenaline kind of of, even though I'm not playing football anymore, I kind of still got it.

Speaker 2 It was like, right, 10, 9, and you get the countdown, right?

Speaker 2 And then I'm thinking, don't swear, don't fall over.

Speaker 2 And then you think, I don't want to be here.

Speaker 2 And then you go over it. The show goes really well.
And you think, that was just such a buzz. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So cool. It's so funny how you just loop back to that same each

Speaker 1 realization then gets your memory wipe. It's like someone shakes the Etcher sketch.
You go, I'm back to start. I want to be the guy with the Guinness again.
Yeah, yeah, I want to be the guy.

Speaker 1 I want to be the guy with the

Speaker 1 perpetual loop. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Was there a period as well? So you said on the bus was a specific time of nerves.

Speaker 1 Dressing room, tunnel. When does that start to drop off? Is there a moment typically that was sort of peak adrenaline anxiety and then when it tailed?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think, you know, I would, I was very good at masking it. Like,

Speaker 2 certainly in the dress room beforehand, I would always be, you'd think I was the most relaxed man in the room. You know, I was

Speaker 2 laughing and joking. I would always, you know, people would get in the zone and have music on.
I tried that a couple of times. I was like, it's not for me.
I'm too, too much in my own thoughts.

Speaker 2 I want to bounce off people, have a laugh, do a few keeper-ups, take my mind off what's really about to happen.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, outwardly, people would think, oh, super confident, but inside, I'm thinking, you know, that's another coping mechanism,

Speaker 2 being around people. I had that with

Speaker 1 the live shows so i'm going on tour around america and canada at the back end of this year and i did the apollo three and a half thousand people last november and uh

Speaker 1 i tried a bunch of different things i got a breath work coach and i'm gonna do breath work i mean you're nervous i was shitting myself

Speaker 1 um

Speaker 1 I was shitting myself before I found the way to get ready, at least for me.

Speaker 1 And a lot of the things that I love to do in my personal development life, the breathworks, the journaling, the meditation, the little mantra stuff,

Speaker 1 all of that, I thought, well, I've got tons of experience in this. I've got thousands of sessions of doing this.
So I'll lean on what I know.

Speaker 1 But it's at least for me. And I resonate with what you say, that I tried a strategy that worked for other people or may have even worked for you, but in a different situation.

Speaker 1 It didn't work for me in this one. So the best thing that I found in this, I've got addiction and speech coach to

Speaker 1 do tongue warm-ups to ensure that I'm able to pronounce my words nice and quickly and I've got my brain moving. I'm doing improv exercises.

Speaker 1 The best thing I found was just to get 10 of my loud friends in the dressing room and talk shit.

Speaker 2 That is exactly how I do it as well. Genuinely.
Yeah. Just get in, take your mind off things.
There are people that like that you say that laser focus that you don't speak to me. I'm in the zone.

Speaker 2 You know, I'm not one of those people. I need chaos around me.
You know, just let's just talk.

Speaker 2 You know, yeah, yeah, we've got, you know, we've got a cup final or, you know, we're playing at a World Cup. But I think the more I took my mind off things, the more relaxed I was, the better I was.

Speaker 2 You still have those nerves and that adrenaline, which you need, I think, to compete at the highest level. But

Speaker 2 those nerves that hold you back, you get rid of those.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I would agree. One of the other sets of stats that I saw, have you seen the statistics around how many players go bankrupt after retiring?

Speaker 1 It seems like around about 40% of Premier League players go bankrupt within five years of retirement. Have you got any idea what's going on there?

Speaker 1 Maybe even for the Americans, British footballers in the Premier League, really regardless of how often you're playing, are paid incredibly well.

Speaker 1 It's an amount of money that to most normal people, I think, or even probably quite wealthy people,

Speaker 1 it's going to be tough to burn through that, especially in five years. And yet 40% of Premier League players go bankrupt within five years of retirement.

Speaker 2 Why do you think that is? Yeah, I think, you know, bad advice. I mean, there was a program I watched last night, you know, two nights ago.

Speaker 2 Just, you know, certain people,

Speaker 2 there's sharks around football dressing rooms that, you know,

Speaker 2 they know that players are very well paid.

Speaker 2 And if they can get on the inside of that dress room, then

Speaker 2 various

Speaker 2 financial advisors that have advised badly, that definitely doesn't help.

Speaker 2 Bad investments,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 the pain, the difficulty of dealing with not playing football every day, not having that structure,

Speaker 2 drinking, you know, maybe doing things that they shouldn't be doing, you know, breakups of marriages,

Speaker 2 you know, it can hit you financially in lots of different ways. And I was very conscious of that because I've seen it firsthand.

Speaker 2 You know, two,

Speaker 2 three of the play, I've played with three players that have tried to kill themselves.

Speaker 2 You know, and I'm not speaking out of turn because they they come on my podcast and talks about it. And Lee Hendry was one of them who I had no idea.

Speaker 2 You know, Aston Villa, he was going through that kind of, you know, he was...

Speaker 1 This is post-retirement.

Speaker 2 Yeah, post-retirement. You know, he had a divorce.

Speaker 2 You know, he went bankrupt. And the same thing.
And, you know, he was in a situation. But because of football, it was very much that kind of man-up scenario.

Speaker 2 He didn't feel like I'm good friends with him. He never said one word.

Speaker 1 Even after you're no longer in the dressing room. So that man-up.
mentality is carried over into personal life after playing.

Speaker 2 You want a safe face. I mean, you know, this is a player that played at top level play for England.
You know, one thing is that

Speaker 2 his home club, you know, Aston Villa, you know, he's from Birmingham. He's a legend in the area.
You know, everyone knows him. And, you know, I think, yeah,

Speaker 2 I had a conversation with him after, and I just, I wish I'd kind of, wish I'd known more, you know.

Speaker 2 Clark Harlau, a player I played with QPR, you know,

Speaker 2 I'm not speaking out of turn. These are well-documented things.
You know, he's admitted it himself

Speaker 2 that he jumped in front of, I think it was a bus.

Speaker 2 You You know, this is horrendous, you know, and it's like, how do you get to that point? The player that I knew, the person that I knew, was so far away from that. You know, he was a leader.

Speaker 2 He was our captain.

Speaker 2 Just, you don't know what's going on in people's heads is my situation and is what I'm trying to say. And

Speaker 2 obviously, you feel for these players. And I do think that more needs to be done to...

Speaker 2 to help players that you know kind of aren't fortunate enough to maybe maybe work after football and it is it's a tough tough situation I know they're going through it obviously with the in the NFL you know quite often the players going bankrupt there or

Speaker 2 you know the injuries are horrendous as well

Speaker 1 maybe there's not not quite enough aftercare for these for these players I wanted to talk about that I looked at some stats around

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 1 severity of CTE for football players, our football, heading the ball, as somebody who has some records to do with using their head and the ball.

Speaker 1 Is this something that you've tapped into to have a look at? Have you done brain scans? Are you concerned?

Speaker 2 I have, yeah. You know what? Like, the

Speaker 2 and listen, you know, I'm not, I'm not poor football as we head the ball. You know, like, I'm pretty sure boxers have it worse than we do, you know.

Speaker 2 But there is a, there's definitely a link. It's been proven that

Speaker 2 there is a link between heading the ball and dementia. And

Speaker 2 that did concern me because I headed the ball. I mean, listen, when I was a kid, I wasn't good.
I wasn't very good at heading. So I, like I said before, I was, I wanted to be a skillful player.

Speaker 2 I wanted to be the type of player that,

Speaker 2 you know, was good with his feet. I didn't even think about heading.

Speaker 2 Yes. But then I was like six foot five and think, you know, and losing headers to people that were, you know, five foot five.
It was embarrassing, basically.

Speaker 2 So I had to train myself to be good at in the air. And I remember being 13, 14, 15, my skulls growing, and I would head the ball until I couldn't see anymore.

Speaker 2 I would head it consistently because I thought it was practice, right? I didn't know that the

Speaker 2 concerns now, obviously. But I genuinely used to get someone to cross the middle ball and I'd head it consistently until I couldn't, I saw stars.

Speaker 2 And I would do that as a young lad three, four times a week till I'd be like, right,

Speaker 2 I can't see anything anymore. Stars in my eyes.

Speaker 2 Sessions over. Session's over, yeah.
And then I'd be back at it the next day. So it cannot be good for you.
It cannot be good for you. So, yeah, I did.
I went.

Speaker 2 I think it was Alan Shearer who did a documentary about it. And I

Speaker 2 watched that documentary and booked myself in the next day. I was like,

Speaker 2 I need to see someone about it. And, you know, obviously I'm okay at the moment, but I think it's something that I'm just aware of now, which is a good thing.

Speaker 2 I'm more aware of the fact that perhaps I need to look out for signs of this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's uh

Speaker 1 i don't know i i i i'll have to do a little bit more research

Speaker 1 i think you're right certainly boxes are in the firing line a little bit more but there is something about the kinetic like power of a big sometimes wet with water on it making it heavier ball coming and the pace that it comes in at and the fact that you're going to meet it as opposed to even if you're being punched you're tending to move backward as that happens uh yeah it's it's it's not good i i was thinking about um tim kennedy ufc fighter green beret man from austin texas scary he

Speaker 1 talked about sort of what the early days of ufc training were like and it was not touch sparring it was people got knocked out in training whereas now

Speaker 1 the last thing that you want is a concussion at any point,

Speaker 1 especially in training. I guess you take one in the match in the fight, I guess, other than the fact it means that you've lost.

Speaker 1 But because it is predisposing you not only to all of these really scary health problems down the line, but it's also predisposing you to then be knocked out more easily in subsequent fights and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 And now the world is totally different. It's all sort of very light, sort of touch sparring stuff.
And that is

Speaker 1 their solution to sort of keep themselves safe.

Speaker 2 I wonder, it wouldn't surprise me if you looked at the youth setup now, if when they're practicing heading the ball, they're using a particularly lighter ball in some way i have to assume there's some sort of interventions that are happening no kids don't head the ball now um they don't head no there's a certain age bracket you have to be over a certain age it's all below head height until they get to a certain age where they're allowed to yeah i mean at the schools and stuff like that they don't they don't head it at all for this reason yeah for this for this reason yeah it's come in and um you know there's they'll play matches where it's it's no heads not you're not not allowed to head it um and i think yeah, I mean, listen, um,

Speaker 2 I ended up with the most Premier League-headed goals. Uh, I've got the record to this day, and um, so I'm over the moon about that situation

Speaker 2 the least people head it, I'll have that forever, hopefully.

Speaker 2 Oh, good.

Speaker 1 I realize you meant that this is a moat that's

Speaker 2 round and around, which is good for me.

Speaker 2 No, I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing that

Speaker 2 you know that we're more aware of the situations now.

Speaker 2 and I think you know I would think twice listen my my my child I would I would not encourage him to to be working on heading at you know they're they're six and seven and their brains are far too fragile and I don't know whether it's me going soft or what but you know the

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 science behind it now just pushes me to the fact that I don't think we should be practicing heading certainly at that age

Speaker 1 would it be harder do you think to be a footballer today

Speaker 1 with social media and smartphone use?

Speaker 1 I have to assume that the stories of you partying while you were playing might be a little bit more viral or at least a little bit more widely scrutinized now than it would have been in 2006.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think

Speaker 2 I would find it tough to be a player in this day and age.

Speaker 2 I mean, listen, it was hard enough getting yourself psyched up to go to away grounds back in that, you know, and that was bad enough because you knew you were just going to get abused from the moment you left the bus all the way, you know, for that little walk where you get absolutely screamed at.

Speaker 2 You get into the, into the stadium, you've just got 50, 60, 70,000 people screaming abuse at you.

Speaker 2 That was bad enough. Then to get home and get back on the bus and flick on my phone and see thousands of other people abusing you, I think

Speaker 2 would be incredibly hard. And no matter what you say, you say, just don't look at it, right? And we're all the same, you know, people do.
You can't help it.

Speaker 2 It's a drug, isn't it?

Speaker 1 You've got the app on your phone.

Speaker 2 You use it when you're not getting shit so i'm going to use it oh fuck i'm getting shit yeah and i mean you know my way of coping with having a bad game for instance was i wouldn't buy the newspapers the next day and i'd give much of the day ms you know that was that was pretty much it um much easier to hide yeah that was easier for me to to not listen to the to the negativity.

Speaker 2 Whereas nowadays, I think, you know, that negativity and it and everyone is very, it's more extreme now.

Speaker 2 It's very much like you have to be, you know, you're either the worst player in the world or you're the best player anyone's ever seen. You know, there's no

Speaker 2 grey areas, is there? You have to be one or the other.

Speaker 1 What do you make of the

Speaker 1 British

Speaker 1 fan culture around football? Because it's only since moving to America that I have seen sports where

Speaker 1 different teams intermingle. I guess rugby has this, but the atmosphere at a rugby game is quite different.

Speaker 1 I remember seeing a video of an American guy that had come over to the UK, and he said that watching sports in the UK is like watching two armies of people getting ready to go to war.

Speaker 1 For people who don't live in the UK and haven't been to a Premier League,

Speaker 1 English Premier League game,

Speaker 1 it's probably pretty shocking, I think, actually, to observe what fans do to each other verbally and what they do to the players and that

Speaker 1 level of aggression and vitriol and

Speaker 1 intensity.

Speaker 1 What do you make of that?

Speaker 2 To be totally honest,

Speaker 2 I wouldn't change it for the world. I genuinely love it.
I think the game of football as I know it,

Speaker 2 I mean, when I look at games that I want to go to, for instance, right? I want to go to an old firm game, Rangers in Celtic. I've not done that yet.

Speaker 2 I want to go to River Plate versus Boca Juniors in Argentina. I want to go to the, you know, Brazil Derbies.
I want to go to Derby's games that matter. I want to see red and blue.

Speaker 2 And I want to see. And that tribalism for me makes our game so special.

Speaker 2 And I do understand there's a time and and a place, and I've been to rugby matches, and I've been to cricket games, and I've been to, you know, games where it isn't segregated. Unregulated.

Speaker 2 And I have the time in my life. I have a lovely time.
I'm sitting next to someone, you know, an Irish fan, and England and Ireland are playing in Scotland.

Speaker 2 Sorry, England and Ireland are playing rugby and I'm having a beer with them. And that's great.
But there is something to be said about, I hate you.

Speaker 2 I want to win so much.

Speaker 2 I do think that this kind of game of ours is, that's what it is. It's religion.
It's, um you know, quite often it is religion that that's you know come together through football and it makes the game

Speaker 2 more passionate and more

Speaker 2 and yeah, it overspills and people go too far. Don't get me wrong, like there are there are occasions where it goes too far, you know, the hooliganism, you know, that era, I hope that's behind us.

Speaker 2 There are still people that take it too far. We don't want to see that, of course, we don't, but I still do want to see, you know, that hatred.

Speaker 2 Like, I, I, when I was playing for Liverpool and I went to gooderson park and i could see the hatred on people faces like i enjoyed it i enjoy that i i want to see that yeah you got a bit of a buzz as long as you shake hands after the game and you go right you know that we've done it you know that's that yeah there is something and you know the tackles flying in i i don't know whether it's i'm a bit old school but it makes me you know you can see the way i'm talking about it i'm animated i'm like we can't take this away from the game that we love it is it overspills sometimes but for me that passion is what makes the game special it would be very difficult to to police you know if you were to say this is too thug like it is unsophisticated and we need to step in and and and and change the game

Speaker 1 good luck with that good luck i mean what what

Speaker 1 by law do you intend on trying to apply and enforce to

Speaker 2 english football fans at um everton derby no i don't i don't you i don't want anyone to change that.

Speaker 2 Listen,

Speaker 2 when we go away sometimes with England, things spill over and no one wants to see it.

Speaker 2 But that passion has to remain. And I think you can be passionate for your team, you know, and almost borderline aggressive at times.

Speaker 1 Disrespectful in the stadium, respectful on the walk home.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think so. And, you know, I see that this football's changed from

Speaker 2 when I used to go to football with my dad in the 80s.

Speaker 2 And my dad would tell you in the 70s before football's changed a hell of a lot now you know I see a lot more families attending games and yeah there is still that tribalism but it's controlled you've been with your wife for nearly 20 years now

Speaker 1 is that rare for an ex-professional footballer I don't know how successful very long-term

Speaker 1 during career to post-career and further marriages are. I don't know what the attrition rate of a professional footballer's marital life is.

Speaker 2 No, I'd say lower. I'd say, you know, definitely lower than 20 years i think you know we are we are lucky in that respect um

Speaker 2 and happy so um

Speaker 2 i i've seen lots of players go through the mill and have difficulties quite often when they've finished um around that transition yeah but quite often as well you know you you're away a lot you know especially if you're playing with england and you're playing in europe you're away most of the time really and quite often if you if you if you if you retire and you're at home every day and all of a sudden it's like, who are you?

Speaker 2 You're here every day.

Speaker 1 So do you think you're saying maybe

Speaker 1 the distance can hide

Speaker 2 some

Speaker 1 incompatibilities in relationships that then sort of come to the surface when

Speaker 1 why you're here so much? Oh, shit, you've retired, you're not a trainer, you're not playing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you know, and it's very much like, I don't want this to be my life, you know, I think that that case, obviously depression, you know, kicks in, I think, certainly when you it's very hard to recreate those heights of playing football and achieving things playing in front of being adored by so many people and scoring a goal

Speaker 2 about what does my life mean now yeah and it's it's it's self-reflection isn't it i mean that can be very difficult um but yeah for me and and and and abby we're we are happy yet um and continue to be and uh yeah god we have our moments like you know and we play that out in front of everyone on the podcast but um we have a laugh and i think that's genuinely the uh

Speaker 2 the the the key to our success is the fact that we enjoy people we enjoy our company what would be your advice to somebody trying to have a partnership in the limelight um

Speaker 2 well certainly don't take things too seriously i think um

Speaker 2 you know definitely don't be someone you're not i've i've realized that you know and i've seen it so many times with people i've met over the years you're like whoa

Speaker 2 it's so different to the person that you you come across as, you know, and I think, um, I think the one thing that certainly, whether you dislike me or, or, or Abby, I think the one thing that you can't say is that we're not the same people.

Speaker 2 Anyone around us who listens to our podcast or

Speaker 2 meets us out and about

Speaker 2 would say that we are exactly the same as what you see

Speaker 2 wherever you see it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think one of the fortunate things about longer form conversations, especially if you start getting in the mix and you're hosting, you're guesting, sometimes it's solo, sometimes it's with regular people, sometimes it's with new experts, sometimes it's you on a, you know,

Speaker 1 200-year-old church.

Speaker 1 By doing that, it is a pretty good

Speaker 1 solvent to strip away

Speaker 1 too much fakery. It's really tough to hold persona for hundreds of hours a year.

Speaker 2 The amount of people that

Speaker 2 I meet, though, and I've been fortunate enough to meet so many, you know, amazing people, people I respect and look up to.

Speaker 2 And yeah, it's amazing when you actually kind of do strip them back, get the real them

Speaker 2 that you think, oh, I wish I hadn't met them.

Speaker 2 I wish I'd just kept it like that, you know?

Speaker 2 But then on the on the flip side of that, I have met people that I thought, you know, maybe you wouldn't get on with, that you think, oh my god, they're amazing, yeah, yeah, yeah, and that is a lovely because you, regardless of what you think you do, you do make judgments, you make instant judgments on people wherever you go, and even if you haven't met them, if I watch something, you know, they might be acting and I'm already making a judgment on what they're like as a person.

Speaker 1 I suppose that's one of the problems of people getting pigeonholed by roles, you know, some of the guys from the in-betweeners or some of the guys from American Pie or whatever, you know, you launch your career into such a particular

Speaker 2 niche.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 not only do future casting directors struggle to pull you outside of that, but the general public.

Speaker 1 I have a friend that was on a really famous American TV show, and we were in Soho House and in Austin, Texas. We sat down at dinner, me, him, and two friends.
And

Speaker 1 like Hen Party comes in, turns, sees him, all of them squeal, like, ah,

Speaker 1 Toby, and like, point.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 my friend is like, ugh. It was almost like, because the show's been out for quite a while now, but

Speaker 1 this was huge 10, 15 years ago. And he lived through all of that.

Speaker 1 And it was almost like watching it happen was a little bit like someone flicking a special switch that put him back into this war zone he'd come from previously because it was a trigger of somebody doesn't see me, somebody sees this thing, I'm this representation, and it was evident that most of his interactions, not most, some of his interactions from the past had not been superbly

Speaker 1 validating. They'd been in many ways probably invalidating.
Like, I don't see you. It would be like someone looking at you and seeing number nine or seeing 140 whatever gold things.

Speaker 1 Like, it'd be like that.

Speaker 1 But at the very least

Speaker 1 you are the person that you are on the pitch it's just this special version of you as opposed to yeah as an actor that must be so tough as a comedian oh fucking hell mate i thought you were funnier than this i'm in the newspaper you're getting the newspaper for the morning i'm getting coffee i mean fucking hell yeah this yeah

Speaker 2 dance monkey dance yeah i do i listen i get it myself you know like i i did a i did a funny dance years ago and still to this day people come over to me and say do the robot do the robot everywhere i go there's kids that weren't even born born when i was doing the robot and um they were like they said it to me and and that's something that that i've kind of learned to live with but i i i actually love it i absolutely love it like it's something that is is part of me you know i did i did this

Speaker 2 mental dance when i was you do need to own it you you you did this to you yeah i did i did yeah but it came from a good place right it came from i'm gonna this is gonna be funny and it you know it was and then um but even now like

Speaker 2 i'm trying to think when i when i did it 2005 right 20 years right so i've got kids eight years old that i'm guarantee if i walk down the street here now there'll be someone to shout something about the robot and they're they're eight years old and i think you know you weren't you weren't born when this was happening but the the fact that you know that people enjoy it and i see the smile on people's faces like

Speaker 2 i don't buy into this kind of

Speaker 2 you know, you've done something great, you've done something that's resonated with people.

Speaker 2 You've done something. So if you are acting and yeah, you have been pigeonholed a little bit, but it resonates with people.
People love it. Like, do you embrace it?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 2 that's what I try and do. Dude, you've got such,

Speaker 1 I think you've got such a great philosophy around this. And like, you're really living it.
It's very admirable.

Speaker 1 And I think it's a a wonderful role model for how to deal with attention well

Speaker 2 from yeah no I appreciate that thank you uh it certainly seems like that and again just to like laugh it off well that's it you know like listen it can get a bit much if I'm if I'm you know walking somewhere with the family and some you know a couple of group of lads are shouting it I might say leave it you know

Speaker 2 give us a give us a rest give it a rest but the kids when I see the kids faces and they're like go on like I usually tell them I've got a robot injury so I can't do it but

Speaker 2 it's like your dad hamstring that's it but they just you know they they they want to see it and it's a bit of fun. You think, you know, that might make their day.
So, you know, why not?

Speaker 1 Hell yeah. Peter Crouch, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 2 You're awesome, man. No, thank you.

Speaker 1 I really appreciate it. Where should people go to keep up to date with all the stuff that you're doing right now?

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I do that Peter Crouch podcast. I do the Therapy Crouch from Ops.
So that Peter Crouch podcast is the football podcast I do, which is very tongue-in-cheek.

Speaker 2 We have a laugh, but we've been everywhere doing it.

Speaker 2 We've ended up, we interviewed Prince William, we've had Elton John on, we've had Sir Rod Stewart we did recently. We've been to places that we never thought

Speaker 2 we would be, you know, and that's just all having a laugh and talk about football. So that is something that I love to do.

Speaker 2 And the therapy crouch is obviously a play on words with myself and my wife, Abby. And we talk about

Speaker 2 relationships and we have a laugh at our own relationships. Very tongue-in-cheek again.

Speaker 2 But I love doing it and hopefully I continue to to do it. And um, you know, it's a privilege being on yours, um, you know, continue to do what you do.
It's it's great, thank you, man.

Speaker 1 I appreciate you. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much for tuning in to an episode with the tallest modern wisdom guest of all time.

Speaker 1 Uh, if you want to watch one with potentially the most dangerous, Bugsy Malone, British rapper, all-round interesting human, he's right here.

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