Poppin' and Lockin' is Crouch's Way of Talking

Lanky England striker Peter Crouch (of the 6'7" frame) has become the embodiment of the Arctic Monkeys' tune "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor," dancing to his own electro-pop tune like a robot from 1984 after goals in warm-up games this week against Hungary and Jamaica. And with Beckham-mania now a bit deadened with age, Crouch's unusual and, frankly, ungainly goal celebration has become the focus of UK football (aka, soccer) fever as the World Cup approaches its start this Friday.

The biggest shock of the England team was to be the introduction of teenager Theo Walcott, who has yet to score a goal in the big show of the Premier League with his team, Arsenal. While gifted with pacey legs that could unnerve defenders, there's been a lot of worry that he's just not experienced enough to do much damage in the World Cup. But Walcott's become an afterthought with the emergence of Crouch (aka, Crouchy, Crouchinho)--who's not only inviting a laugh at himself, but also scoring goals (4 this week in the two warm-ups). And he's capturing the imagination of a nation starved to be in the football spotlight again. Here's some puffy commentary from The Guardian:

Bring on Peter Crouch, a 25-year-old daddy-longlegs of a footballer, all limbs and digits and goalscoring nous. He is an outsider who suddenly finds himself to be a near-certain England World Cup substitute and who may even make Sven's starting lineup. He shoots, he scores, he does robotic dancing for Prince William - what more do you want?

Where Gazza was too vulgar, Gary Lineker too perfect, Alan Shearer too chippy and David Beckham too tattooed, Crouchy (surely?) is everything an English hero should be.

Man-of-the-people enough for the left, Anglo-Saxon enough for the right, he appeals to the whole land with northern roots and a traineeship with Spurs. And as we slob out in front of the television, beer in one hand, onion bhaji in the other, he shan't alienate us. He is handsome enough, but it is unlikely that Sam Taylor-Wood will be making a one-hour-seven-minute video of him sleeping to be played on a loop at the National Portrait Gallery for a year.

In fact it is his physicality that makes him so attractive for the 90% of us who aren't blessed by our genes. Begone, David and Victoria and your beautiful friends, here is Peter, gangling and gawky, with hands that have an unfortunate habit of flying off at angles more at home with a teapot when he is kicking a football. This is Peter, England's World Cup secret weapon.

I hope he does well for England (Crouch will indeed be starting in attack against England's first opponents, Paraguay), and I'm rooting for England to make it to the semi-finals (though it'll be a tough slog, especially with the more established wunderkind, Wayne Rooney, recovering from a broken foot suffered in the middle of May and very doubtful, barring miraculous recovery, of being much of a presence if he even makes the squad cut this week).

But back to the dance moves--here's a video from YouTube of some of Crouch's moves set to some funky JB tuneage:



And here he is scoring his first goal (of a hat trick) against Jamaica yesterday, complete with robot celebration: