Even now, with the distance of 13 years, it is a goal that comes back to Peter Crouch almost as a personal rite of passage. February 18, 2006. Manchester United at Anfield in the FA Cup. The toughest judgments are passed in these games, this one played out to the abject, ungoverned din of baiting chants about Hillsborough and Munich.

Crouch's first goal in nine games settled it, a glancing header from Steve Finnan's cross, pushed onto one post and then the other by Edwin van der Sar before crossing his goal line.

Up in the TV commentary gantry, a seemingly startled John Motson cried, "Anfield is rocking, well would you believe it?"

For Crouch, life at Liverpool was a challenge and a gift. Having signed for the then European champions the previous July, he'd failed to score in his first 19 games. This 6ft 7in son of a Macclesfield advertising executive was never going to be prolific in the free-scoring ways of Ian Rush or Robbie Fowler. But he would spend three-and-a-half seasons at Anfield (scoring 42 goals) under Rafa Benitez that are, broadly, remembered fondly.

There would even be the first hat-trick of his professional career, in a 4-1 Premier League win against Arsenal, but that goal against United - securing Liverpool's first FA Cup win over their bitter rivals since before World War II - took him to a different place. One he admits today that he found it a struggle to escape.

Buzzing

"I found it hard to come down after," Crouch explained this week. "For me, Liverpool-United is the biggest game in English football, always will be. And to get the winner . . . well . . . I couldn't really park it the way top, top players could.

"When I experienced a huge high like that, I'd be buzzing for days after. It was a weakness of mine. I'd look at the top players, the Gerrards, the Rooneys, the Carraghers, the Lampards, the Terrys, straight after a game you could see they were moving on to the next one. But after a high like that, if we were playing three days later, I'd still be reminiscing about what I'd just done."

The success of Fernando Torres eventually persuaded Crouch to leave Liverpool in July 2008, but he left with a heavy heart.

"No one wants to leave Liverpool in my opinion," he reflected. "It's only downhill from there. I was playing the best football of my career when I was there. I got 11 goals in a calendar year for England while I was a Liverpool player.

Expand Close Peter Crouch scores his first goal for Liverpool in their FA Cup victory against Manchester United at Anfield in 2006 Getty Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Peter Crouch scores his first goal for Liverpool in their FA Cup victory against Manchester United at Anfield in 2006

"We got to a Champions League final ('07), won the FA Cup, finished second in the league. And I feel a big connection, not just with the club, but with the city. My wife's from Liverpool, her Dad's a big Red. I just have a big affection for the place. Who wouldn't have once you've played there? I speak to John Arne Riise, Luis Garcia, Dirk Kuyt and even Torres. They all feel they're still part of Liverpool. It doesn't wear off easily!"

Crouch's 22 years as a professional footballer formally ended in July. His view of the industry (now communicated in a second book) is part love-letter, part wicked satire, sweeping between the tell-tale signs of young men wrestling in dressing-rooms with debilitating panic attacks and the fetish for Gucci man-bags and impractically fast cars.

He talks with faintly whimsical amusement of how independent thought isn't so much discouraged in the game as considered eccentric; most footballers almost slavishly drawn to the same clothes, holiday destinations, restaurants and even dishes (albeit James McClean's liking for a dollop of brown sauce in his rice pudding certainly broke the stereotype).

Their world is a hopeless cliché, he recognises that. But games like tomorrow's at Old Trafford still fill him with almost childish expectation.

Liverpool and United come to it from different altitudes, palpably aiming for different things. Crouch says he would love to have played for Jurgen Klopp.

"He just looks like he's got a great togetherness there. They've bought well, he's improved players and he just looks like he's having a good time doing it. He's my cup of tea. I like people who show their emotions!"

And Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's predicament?

"I'll ask you this," he challenged. "Jose Mourinho, David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, are they bad managers? I don't think so. Their credentials say otherwise. There's a problem at United that clearly needs to be addressed and I don't think constantly changing managers is the solution.

"I mean, you can't say they haven't spent money, so there seems to be an issue with recruitment. You have to ask is there a recognisable philosophy there? I'm not so sure."

In Crouch's estimation, one simple quality distinguishes Klopp's Liverpool and Pep Guardiola's Manchester City from the rest of the Premier League today. That quality is humility.

"I remember Mark Hughes telling me how he'd asked Pep after one game how he kept the City team so intense in their play. And his reply was: 'It's easy when my two best players, David Silva and Kevin de Bruyne, run further and work harder than anybody else on the team. When they're doing that, what excuse has anyone else not to do it?'"

Without that willingness to sacrifice individual conceit for the collective good, Crouch believes no player will win the trust of modern managers like Klopp and Guardiola.

Under Tony Pulis at Stoke, the system was so well honed he suggests that even Barcelona might have struggled to beat them. Yet, after Pulis's departure, Stoke signed one player who would have been at odds with that culture of selflessness.

Crouch writes of Xherdan Shaqiri's time as a team-mate in the Potteries and his suspicion of a player who "either does not understand the system or chooses not to". The Swiss international might, notionally, be selected on the right side of midfield, but make a run that brought him to the left wing, then take an age to reanimate, leaving the entire team "totally out of shape".

Could this explain Klopp's apparent reluctance to give him game-time?

"Well, I wasn't surprised Liverpool took him because he's one of the most naturally gifted footballers I've played with," explained Crouch. "He can make a difference. My issue when he played at Stoke was that while, obviously, he could look brilliant, there were times when there was a lot of tactical ill-discipline.

Specific

"If you've got a specific role to play that involves tracking back, just going and doing your own thing doesn't really work. And I certainly don't think that would work with Klopp.

"You look at (Roberto) Firmino, as technically gifted as he is, as free-spirited as he is, he still fits into the system, still works hard, still tracks back to win the ball back in midfield.

"If he's asked to drop deeper, he does it. If he's asked to play high, he does it. (Sadio) Mané and (Mo) Salah the same. As technically gifted as they are, they're doing their bit for the team. It's quite obvious that Klopp needs that.

"If he can't trust someone 100 per cent, it looks to me like he won't play you. That isn't to say Shaqiri's not a gifted player, because he is. He's one of the best I've played with."

Given his own run of barren spells in front of goal, Crouch has a natural empathy for strikers struggling to find the net.

In this, he expresses particular respect for Shane Long, whose often parodied goal-less stretches ran, as he recalls, for 23 games up to December 2016 and for 325 days the following year.

"Four months after that, he went another 279 days scoreless," wrote Crouch. "Even typing those words, makes me feel slightly sick!"

Yet he believes that Long has had "a decent Premier League career". Why?

"To me, he would just be the ideal partner up front. He works hard, he gets into areas where no defender wants you to go. He's doing it all for the good of the team. He might get stick for those barren spells, but he gives a hell of a lot to a team. Stuff that's only missed when he's not there."

Crouch's height left him susceptible to often vicious bile from opposition supporters, some even calling him "freak" during his earliest days in the professional game.

In time, his success managed to subdue the worst of it, yet this week's events in Bulgaria managed to reawaken a deep unease within that he's been part of an industry faintly deaf to the abuse of black team-mates.

Crouch played for England at under-16, under-18, under-21 level and senior level, remembering specifically visits to countries in eastern Europe where "you just knew" the poison would be audible.

"I was on underage teams with Shola Ameobi, Titus Bramble and Jlloyd Samuel and they'd be getting it non-stop," he recalled. "They'd be getting absolute dogs' abuse, but the way it was back then, you'd just get on with it. It feels a shame to say that now, but that's how it was.

"I remember once, I don't want to say the country in case I get it wrong, but the abuse Shola was getting was absolutely deafening. But the general attitude was, 'Oh, that's just what you get in these places, you're not going to change them...'

"You'd go to these countries and it was just so aggressive. And coming from a very diverse part of London, that just felt bizarre to me. Something out of the Dark Ages.

"So it's been a problem in football for a long time, but there seems to be more of a collective voice to do something about it now. One thing I would say though is we've still got problems closer to home and maybe we should concentrate on getting our own league sorted and, hopefully, UEFA and FIFA will sort the rest of the game out.

"But their fines don't seem to be achieving much to me. If you make the penalties harder on those responsible, that might stop it."

In the meantime, Liverpool's pursuit of a first Premier League title?

"City can be relentless, but I just can't see Liverpool dropping eight points this year," he reflected. "That said, I know a lot of Liverpool fans and none of them are saying that. Because they've been burned before.

"So I nearly don't want to even answer that question. I don't want to be the jinx!"

'I, Robot: How to be a Footballer 2', by Peter Crouch is available in book stores now

Irish Independent