New Liverpool scout Jonathan Woodgate was, at one point, one of English football's most promising centre-halves. Then he left Leeds and his body succumbed to a series of serious injuries, restricting him to just 206 league appearances in 15 seasons, meaning the England international played an average of just 13.7 league games a season for the majority of his career. And nowhere did the medical staff go to more extreme and bizarre lengths to get Woodgate fit than at Real Madrid.
Appearing on 'Goals On Sunday', yesterday, Woodgate told hosts Ben Shepherd and Chris Kamara about his ordeal in the Spanish capital, where he spent two seasons, making just 14 appearances in two seasons, including his infamous disaster of a debut, in which he scored an own goal and was sent off shortly after.
"Signing there injured was a nightmare. All you want to do is go out on the pitch, impress them and try and make the team better and I couldn't. I was rushing my injury I think I did it twice when I was there and finally I had an operation on it."
"I was trying everything. There was a time when this doctor came over and started getting all this grass and putting it on my leg. He looked like Captain Birdseye, and I'm looking at him and thinking to myself, 'what am I doing?'
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"We were in the physio's house at the time and he started boiling this pan and putting grass in it and I was thinking: 'Is that for me? What are we going to do with this grass?'
"You'll do anything and try anything [to get fit]. I had botox in my thigh to try and stop one of the muscles from firing. Weird."
Woodgate can at least now laugh at the curious treatment he suffered during his time at the Bernabeu, although he'll no doubt wish he'd had more chance to make an impact with the Spanish giants, leaving in 2006, just a year before they recaptured La Liga from Barcelona.
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(H/T Sky Sports)
Topics: Football, Real Madrid