The former centre-back excelled at teams like Leeds United and Middlesbrough and was widely regarded as one of the best English defenders of his generation in his prime. If not the best.
It is only part of his story. The 42-year-old has also been through some stressful and dark times and has been the subject of many conversations about his perceived failings during his career. A player who was the epitome of the class in his day, but prone to injury. A manager who was labeled ‘thick’ by sections of supporters at his hometown club.
Woodgate spoke about his own mental health struggles on a recent Under the Surface Podcast for footballers past and present. He also referred to Teessider being “devastated” at being sold by Leeds to Newcastle as a financial maelstrom unfolded.
The subsequent death of his former Magpies tag team partner in Gary Speed also hit him hard.
Of his time at Elland Road, but sense of dissatisfaction, he said: “I was devastated when I left, I didn’t even want to leave at the time because it was the only thing I knew and loved about the club.
“I’ve been through the youth system since I was 14, so to get to the top and then be told you have to leave because the club is going to go bankrupt, you didn’t want to do it.
“(Rio) Ferdinand, (Harry) Kewell, (Mark) Viduka, (Lee) Bowyer, Alan Smith. We had a really top team, and all of them young, it was like playing with your teammates.
“Going into training, you were laughing as well as training and it was amazing. We loved the fans and the fans loved us and we found a relationship that could relate to us as most of us went through the youth system on the side and then played for the first team.
“I didn’t want to go to Newcastle, but Bobby Robson was the manager, Alan Shearer was a legend, Gary Speed was too…”
Speaking about his sense of loss over Speed’s passing in 2011, he continued: “Gary was an amazing person, he would do anything for you. He would pick up the phone and call you out of the blue.
“I used to keep in touch with him on the phone, and then that happened, and it was out of the blue. He was devastated. I think Newcastle was playing that day and I was watching Shay Given and Craig Bellamy cry, and it was a very sad moment.”
Woodgate traded St James’ Park for the Bernabéu in August 2004. It should have been the most glorious chapter of his career at the world’s biggest and most famous club, Real Madrid.
Sadly, the opposite was true with his time in Spain beset by a horrendous fortune of injuries.
He observed: “That was the most difficult part of my career at Madrid. I was ashamed that my body kept letting me down. It was the path of shame. You come in at a ground of 90,000 and you just want the ground to swallow you.
“In Madrid I did 1,000 sit-ups a day trying to strengthen my core and my back, and I thought to myself ‘1,000 sit-ups a day. God. How was that going to get me in shape? If anything, it was going to cause more back problems so in the end I went back to my old physio in Leeds who got me fit.
“I had physio, Botox, injections… There was one time they bought a guy who had written to the club saying he could get me in shape. He boiled some grass, put it in cling film and wrapped it around my leg.
“I started to wonder if the club thought it was all in my mind and that I’m not really that bad. The scans didn’t show anything, but I knew it wasn’t right because I couldn’t run, so I started thinking psychologically, do you think I’m fooled? Do you think I’m soft? Do you think I’m lying?
“I didn’t really tell people when I was having a hard time. I’m one of those people that when they were struggling, they didn’t really tell anyone and I was just trying to deal with it.”
After hanging up his boots, Woodgate would later go into management at Boro.
It ended abruptly in June 2020, less than a season after taking charge, with the Teessiders in danger of being relegated to the third tier for the first time since 1985-86.
Woodgate was handed a report that would have tested much more experienced managers. Being the local boy when the club, his club, was struggling meant that he was in the line of fire wherever he went out in the community, taking home all the poor results.
He said: “I received a lot of abuse from fans. I’m not intellectually smart, pretty basic, and they call me a lot of names: ‘he’s dumb, he can’t speak properly’. I lost a bit of confidence to be honest with you as a person.
“It was tough. If you get a lot of abuse online, if you shoot that much mud, some of it sticks.”
On his dismissal, he added: “It was a really difficult time, the team that I supported as a kid, I played and then I was the coach, and it was the perfect job…
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Source: www.yorkshirepost.co.uk
This notice was published: 2022-06-11 05:00:58