Thursday 13 June 2013

Peter Crouch remembers Kano fans

England striker Peter Crouch still reserve fresh memories of football fans in Kano where he featured 14 years ago.
Crouch was among the England team at the FIFA U-20 World Cup hosted by Nigeria, with Kano their Group stage venue.
The team got their first taste of action in West Africa in the newly opened Sani Abacha Stadium in Kano, with 19,000 fans adding colour and verve to their Group D opener against the USA.
“We were going into the unknown, I had never been to Africa - let alone Nigeria - and the fans were crazy, it was a great experience,” he said on fifa.com.
“You could tell that they were so pleased to have it there and it was a huge deal for them. The atmosphere in the stadium was mental, but it was great and good to be part of.
“The shock of arriving and people welcoming you - I don’t think we really realised how big it was until we got there, but all the lads embraced it and it probably stood a lot of us in good stead for the future.”
The future for Crouch was to feature trips to both Germany 2006 and South Africa 2010 with the senior side, where he got the former off to the perfect start in what turned out to be an awkward match against Trinidad and Tobago.
England crashed out of the competition in the Group stage.

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