My red card cost the team: Peter Crouch

Tottenham Hotspur striker Peter Crouch tells DNA that each goal Real Madrid scored against them in Champions League quarterfinal hurt him a lot.

Tottenham’s performances on the European stage have surpassed the expectations of many…
In my opinion, I’ve had the experience of the Champions League before with Liverpool and I believe this squad at Spurs is as good if not better than that at Liverpool. I look around our dressing room and we have got some fantastic players. I know we come up against some top quality opposition but I think we have got enough about us to go out and express ourselves as we have demonstrated. We had nothing to fear.

The Champions League is the best competition in the world for me. It has been a really exciting time for us playing in it for the first time in the Club’s history. We competed as if it was the Premier League.

A lot of times in Europe teams will sit back and try to soak up pressure and then try to hit on the counter but I think we have taken the game to teams and played at the Premier League pace. That was certainly one of our strengths in the competition.

People know that Tottenham Hotspur is a big club because it is exactly that with a lot of history and tradition although maybe it hasn’t been quite up to the standard that other clubs have set in recent years in England. I think with the quality of players and the youngsters coming through now, we can hopefully make Tottenham Hotspur the team, the squad and the club it should be.

What makes Gareth Bale so successful with the club?
Gareth is a fantastic young player who is really fulfilling his potential at the minute. It obviously took him a while to settle when he came from Southampton but even when he wasn’t playing, when I first signed, you could tell he was top class and he’s showing that now. He is top class in training too. He is such a great athlete with a great left foot. He can score goals and he can create them, he has got a bright future. I rely a lot on crosses and balls into the box, and when you’ve got Gareth on one side and Aaron Lennon on the other, it’s a dream really for a centre forward. He has had obviously received a lot of plaudits this season and it certainly hasn’t gone to his head. He’s still the same — down to earth — and we are lucky to have him here.

What should the club change or improve to qualify for the Champions League yet again?
I think you can always learn. We are really pleased with the progress we have made in the last couple of years but we can still get better. I think there have been a few times where we haven’t started well in games and we’ve had to come from goals down. If we can cut that out, then I think there’s no limit really to what we can achieve with this group of players.

How hard did it hit you when you realised that you had picked up a red card in the first leg of the Champions League quarterfinal against Real?
The sending-off was probably as low as I’ve felt. The sheer importance of it, it’s the quarterfinal of the Champions League, Real Madrid at the Bernabeu, the whole world was watching. With all those things together, it was very disappointing. With each goal that went in, I felt I cost the team. I held my hands up honestly and I still feel I’ve got something to offer before the season is out. It was entirely my fault. I shouldn’t have dived in. I wasn’t too pumped up. I’ve played in big games before. They were genuinely honest tackles, in which I felt I could win the ball. I said to the players and the manager that I was sorry for what happened and the Stoke game was my chance to say sorry to all the fans that had travelled to Madrid as well. Hopefully they felt that I’ve repaid them with the two goals I got.

What’s the experience of working with Harry Redknapp like?
People talk about him as being a man-manager and he has been fantastic with me. I have worked with him at a few different clubs and he has always got the best out of me but he certainly knows his tactics, I think people underestimate him in that regard. He believes in attacking football. He just loves to see good players attacking. And I think that’s what the fans love to see. When they come to White Hart Lane at the moment, it’s a great place to be, because you are going to see goals and some good attacking football. And that’s certainly the way the manager at this club likes to play, that’s his belief. The manager has come in here, and obviously he has added to the squad as well, but I think he’s just got us playing football how it should be, really. We’re competing for the Champions League places, and people are even talking about us winning the league at some stage in the future, and I think that will happen.

Do you think Redknapp would make a good England coach?
He has been fantastic for Spurs ever since he came in. He took over a side that was struggling and now he’s turned them into a team that’s playing full of confidence and got them in the Champions League. That’s testament to the manager and with him being English it is only natural that he will be linked to the England job but we also want to keep him at Spurs for as long as possible.

You seem to be confident of doing well in the next few matches. What gives you such unwavering confidence?  
We have got such quality in our dressing room that we shouldn’t be afraid of anyone. We’ve proved that with our results this season against the likes of AC Milan, Inter Milan, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool so we shouldn’t be frightened of anyone and the manager thinks that too. He believes that we’ve got good enough players to beat anyone and we’ve got confidence in our own ability and feel we’ve got good enough players to cope and put our stamp on games. I look around our dressing room and think that, as footballers go, we’re as good as any. I said right from the start when I came to this club, I couldn’t believe how we had not achieved anything. With the squad we’ve got and the backing we get from the fans I think it’s only a matter of time.