Worst Panenka ever? Peter Crouch for England vs Jamaica in 2006

Peter Crouch‘s record for England is seriously impressive.

The gangly forward, who represented the likes of Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Stoke City at club level, was capped 42 times by the Three Lions over the course of five years.

And in that time, Crouch scored an eye-catching 22 goals, which means he averaged better than a strike every two appearances.

As any football fan will know, that’s not easy to achieve on the international stage.

Three of Crouch’s goals in an England shirt came in a match against Jamaica in 2006, when he first broke into the ‘Golden Generation’ squad.

In a warm-up for that year’s World Cup, Crouch bagged a hat-trick at a packed Old Trafford.

He was dangerously close to missing out on a famous treble, though.

With England 5-0 up and two goals to his name, Crouch was given the responsibility of taking a penalty in front of the Stretford End.

Now, most people would opt to smash the ball as hard they could in the same situation, but Crouch decided against doing that.

Instead, he tried to perform a ‘Panenka’ from the spot and to say it went disastrously wrong would be a bit of an understatement.

The goalkeeper wasn’t even called into action, because the ball was hit way too hard and went sailing over the crossbar into the fans stationed behind the goal.

Wow! Penalty misses don’t come much worse than that…

Fortunately for Crouch, he scored his hat-trick goal around seven minutes later with a very tidy right-footed finish into the bottom corner.

Check out the match highlights from England’s 6-0 win over Jamaica:

After Sergio Aguero was the victim of a failed ‘Panenka’ during a Manchester City versus Chelsea game in 2021, Crouch spoke spoke about his disastrous attempt 15 years prior.

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