Former Liverpool striker Peter Crouch has claimed that reds defender Joe Gomez has suffered through a ‘difficult week’.
The 22-year-old was involved in an extremely high-profile disagreement with England team-mate Raheem Sterling last week following their face-up in Liverpool’s victory over Manchester City.
Now, Crouch has reflected on the situation: “It would have been a difficult week for him away with England — as it would have been for Liverpool’s Joe Gomez — but you’d be surprised how quickly footballers can put an incident of this nature behind them,” he wrote in his Daily Mail column.
“This is not to trivialise what happened between Sterling and Gomez — who was the subject of ridiculous, pathetic booing at Wembley — but flashpoints are more common than you would think. Their row was amplified because it happened on England duty.”
OPINION
There’s no doubt that Gomez will have had a tricky time of things over the past couple of weeks. First there was the incident with Sterling itself, where he thought he was turning up to England duty with everything smoothed over after the two players made up at the full-time whistle in the Liverpool-City game. By all accounts it was Sterling who initiated the bust-up, with Gomez remaining calm throughout. Then, after personally urging Three Lions boss Gareth Southgate to keep Sterling involved and in the squad, the Reds star was subjected to horrendous booing when he entered the fray against Montenegro just over a week ago. It was absolutely shocking from those fans, and he certainly didn’t deserve that. He was the innocent party, yet it seems that he was punished for what Southgate did. Still, he’s back with his club now so hopefully things will improve.
