the job at home as Crouchy’s hat-trick and a Jermain Defoe goal
clinched a 4-0 win at the Lane. We were into the group stage.
“I remember the away game,” he recalled. “I was on the bench
and we let ourselves down a bit. We went 3-0 behind and we were
all thinking ‘we’ve worked so hard to get here and we could go out’.
“There was a lot of pressure on the return leg but everyone was
up for it. Thankfully, it was a great moment and a proud night for
me. I’ve still got the matchball at home, in the office in among my
hat-trick balls from my career – but that’s the only one with stars
on it! That has pride of place at home.”
Our first match in the group stage was a 2-2 draw at Werder
Bremen and who else but Crouchy to score our first goal in the
Champions League ‘proper’.
“I played with Marko Arnautovic here at Stoke and he was at
Werder Bremen at that time. He told me that they’d done loads
of video work on me in the air and crosses coming in from Gareth
Bale and Rafa van der Vaart. “So what happened in the first 20 minutes...I scored a header!
It was a great moment. We were 2-0 up and should have seen that
game out, but it was a good start. Marko laughs about it now.
They’d worked on it all week!”
White Hart Lane then staged its first-ever Champions League
group stage match on September 29, 2010, for the visit of FC
Twente and it was a game that had everything. Indeed, van der
Vaart experienced just about every football emotion in the space
of an hour in the pouring rain in N17.
Rafa had a penalty saved, scored a cracking opener and was
then sent off. His was one of three penalties on the night, the
second two converted by Pavlyuchenko, before Bale then scored
a trademark goal to finish it off.
“I'd played in the Champions League before that for Liverpool
and I must admit, I thought before we went into the season,
because it was our first time in the Champions League withPETER CROUCH“WE JUST WENT OUT
THERE AND BATTERED
TEAMS! IT WAS
UNBELIEVABLE. THERE
WAS LITERALLY NO
FEAR AT ALL”
Peter climbs majestically
against Werder Bremen54
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