JONATHAN WOODGATE has opened on his “failure” to make the grade at Real Madrid, despite trying their best – and sometimes unorthodox methods – to get him fit.
Former England international Woodgate sealed a dream £13.4million transfer to Real Madrid from Newcastle in 2004.
However, the dream quickly turned into a nightmare as injuries took their toll and dogged him throughout his two year Madrid stint.
Woodgate, 44, did not mince his words when it came to his time with Los Blancos when speaking about it on the Original Penguin X Campaign Against Living Miserably Under The Surface podcast.
He said: “Failure is the one word I’d use about Madrid.
“When you sign for the biggest team in the world, you want to go there and make a difference, but I didn’t.
“I didn’t win any trophies there and I hardly played, so that’s why I’d put it down as a failure.
“When I look back on my career, that gets to me. More than anything. Because you’re on the biggest stage. And my body let me down.”
In the end the defender managed just 14 appearances for the club, but did manage to score one goal.
Woodgate revealed the club physios and doctors did all they could to curb his injury issues.
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This included a 1,000-a-day sit up routine – which Woodgate was not a fan of – and a Captain Birdseye lookalike wrapping boiled grass around his leg in clingfilm.
He said: “In Madrid I was doing 1,000 sit-ups a day trying to strengthen my core and my back, and was thinking to myself ‘1,000 sit ups a day. Jheez. How was that going to get me fit?’
“If anything it was going to cause me more trouble in my back, so in the end I went back to my old physio at Leeds who got me fit.
“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.
“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 returned to England with Middlesbrough, and in a cruel twist of fate Madrid broke their La Liga title drought, something which he said admitted left him “devastated”.
He said: “The year I left, they won La Liga, and I’m not gonna lie, I was absolutely devastated because I wasn’t there.
“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.”
Regardless, injuries continued to blight him throughout the rest of his career.
Woodgate continued: “Most of the games I played with an injury.
“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, during Ben Gibson‘s debut, I said to him ‘you’re going to have to cover me here’ as I’d pulled my calf, but I wanted to stay on until half time I couldn’t handle the fans’ groans of ‘not again’, and walking off to that is not a nice 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 towards the end of the session before the game I got a slight hamstring strain and I’m trying to kid myself, because I wanted to play in the game.
“Ten 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.”
Woodgate would also go on to star for Tottenham and Stoke before retiring in 2016.
He is now a coach under Michael Carrick at the Riverside Stadium.
Woodgate has previously inherited manager positions at Middlesbrough and Bournemouth after being assistant manager.
