Jonathan Woodgate described his time at Real Madrid as a “failure” – regardless of a gruelling health regime of 1,000 sit-ups a day.
Woodgate, who broke into the soccer scene with Leeds at 18, was signed by Newcastle in 2003. He then made headlines when he moved to La Liga giants Real Madrid in a shock £13.4million switch from Newcastle.
Despite his expertise, there have been issues concerning the then 24 12 months outdated’s health as a consequence of earlier accidents. These worries proved legitimate as he confronted quite a few setbacks throughout his time with Los Blancos as accidents plagued his stint in Spain.
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“Failure is the one word I’d use about Madrid,” Woodgate confessed on the Original Penguin X Campaign Against Living Miserably Under The Surface podcast, by way of the Mirror. “When you sign for the biggest team in the world, you want to go there and make a difference, but I didn’t.
“I did not win any trophies there and I hardly performed, in order that’s why I’d put it down as a failure. When I look again on my profession, that will get to me. More than something. Because you are on the largest stage. And my physique let me down.”
Woodgate confessed that his recurring back trouble was causing more injuries to other parts of his body, limiting him to just 14 appearances in his two seasons at Real Madrid. The club tried everything possible to help Woodgate regain his fitness, even making him do a staggering amount of daily sit-ups.
Woodgate was sceptical about the effectiveness of the daily sit-ups, stating: “In Madrid I used to be doing 1,000 sit-ups a day attempting to strengthen my core and my again, and was pondering to myself ‘1,000 sit ups a day. Jheez. How was that going to get me match?'” He added: “If something it was going to trigger me extra hassle in my again, so ultimately I went again to my outdated physio at Leeds who obtained me match.”
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The defender additionally informed how the membership left no stone unturned of their makes an attempt to get him match; from physiotherapy to unconventional strategies: “I had physio, Botox, injections. There was one time they bought this fella over who had written to the club saying he could get me fit. He boiled some grass, put it in clingfilm and wrapped it round my leg.” Astonished, he added: “I was thinking to myself ‘what?! I’m at Real Madrid and you’re putting grass on me’. He looked like Captain Birdseye!”
“I started wondering if the club thought it was all in my mind and I’m not really that bad? Scans weren’t showing anything, but I knew I wasn’t alright because I couldn’t run, so I started thinking psychologically ‘Do they think I’m deluded? Do they think I’m soft? Do they think I’m lying?'”
Woodgate wrapped up his Madrid horror present in summer time 2006 and secured a come again to English soccer along with his childhood membership, Middlesbrough. Sadly, the Spanish squad bagged a La Liga title shortly after his exit.
“The year I left, they won La Liga, and I’m not gonna lie, I was absolutely devastated because I wasn’t there,” confessed Woodgate. “But I got back fit playing for Boro and back in the England squad, and the one thing about me as a player was that I would never give up, always kept on going and tried to find something within.”
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Despite this, his profession at Boro continued to be marked by recurring accidents. Undeterred, he determined to not let these hurdles finish his profession prematurely. He revealed that he spent a major a part of his profession enjoying while injured and fooling himself about his precise health state.
“Most of the games I played with an injury,” he overtly admitted. “I’d try and trick my mind if I felt my hamstring in training, and tell myself I didn’t feel that to try and play. I wanted to stay on.
“At Middlesborough, throughout Ben Gibson’s debut, I mentioned to him ‘you are going to need to cowl me right here’ as I’d pulled my calf, however I wished to remain on till half time I could not deal with the followers’ groans of ‘not once more’, and strolling off to that’s not a pleasant feeling.
“I was embarrassed that my body kept letting me down. The embarrassment of having to come off. My last game for Madrid was against Arsenal and in direction of the top of the session earlier than the sport I obtained a slight hamstring pressure and I’m attempting to child myself, as a result of I wished to play within the sport.
“10 minutes in, my hamstring went. I’d been injured so much at Madrid, and I knew I was running out of chances because they’re not going to keep you forever if you keep getting injured. It was the walk of shame. You come off in a stadium of 90,000, and you just want the ground to swallow you up.”
The centre-back, who amassed simply eight England caps ultimately, went on to play for Tottenham and Stoke City earlier than bringing the curtain down on his crocked profession again at Boro in 2016. While Woodgate refuses to dwell an excessive amount of on the previous for the sake of his personal sanity, he admits a part of him will all the time be left questioning what might need been.
“You wish you could change different things but if I look back now and thought ‘bloody hell’, my mentality would be all over the place because there were so many things that didn’t go right. Because my body let me down in certain situations. If I went and thought ‘I wish I’d done this, I wish I’d done that’, my head would go crazy.
“It ought to have been rather a lot higher than it was, that is the massive factor. When I take into consideration Madrid I believe ‘Oh my God’, however my physique let me down. I do know for a incontrovertible fact that I might have performed there, and I might have been successful there however accidents have been an absolute killer.”
* This article was crafted with the help of an AI tool, which speeds up Daily Star’s editorial research. An editor reviewed this content before it was published. You can report any errors to starletters@dailystar.co.uk