Dirtiest footballer ever? Peter Crouch named the one player who scared him

Peter Crouch once named the only footballer who genuinely scared him during his professional career.

And no, it wasn’t former Manchester United captain Roy Keane.

Some of you may not be familiar with the name Kevin Muscat. But Crouch, and many other footballers around the world who played in the 1990s and 2000s, will certainly never forget the former Australian defender.

Muscat left Australia in 1996, signing for Crystal Palace. He then went on to have spells at Wolves, Rangers and, fittingly, Millwall before returning to his home country in 2005.

The former Australia international, who scored 10 goals in 46 games for his national team, put the fear of god into his opponents with his approach to defending - which, at times, was downright violent.

In 2013, Spanish football website El Gol Digital named Muscat as the dirtiest player in football history, above the infamous Andoni ‘Butcher of Bilbao’ Goikoetxea.

“Kevin Muscat scared me,” Crouch confessed on his podcast in 2018. “You know people say, ‘I’m going to break your legs’, when he would say it you genuinely believed him.”

One of Crouch’s podcast co-hosts added: “My seven-year-old asked me who is the dirtiest player of all time. I’ve gone straight to YouTube and typed Kevin Muscat in and let him see the horrors. He understood.

“You can get one-off Kevin Muscat horrors. You can get the best of Kevin Muscat, which is the worst of Kevin Muscat. It’s terrifying.”