Jonathan Woodgate opens up on Leeds United exit, Middlesbrough abuse and mental health issues - Yorkshire Post 11/6/22

JONATHAN WOODGATE played in marquee games for club and country alongside some of the most iconic players in world football at the best stadiums.

By Leon Wobschall

The former centre-half excelled for the likes of Leeds United and Middlesbrough and was widely viewed to be one the best English defenders of his generation in his prime. If not the best.

It is only one part of his story. The 42-year-old has also suffered some stressful and dark times and been subject to plenty of chatter about his perceived failings during his career. A player who was class personified on his day, but injury prone. A manager who was labelled as ‘thick’ by sections of supporters at his hometown club.

Woodgate opened up on his own mental health issues in a recent Under the Surface Podcast for past and present footballers. It also referenced the Teessider being ‘devastated’ at being sold by Leeds to Newcastle when a financial maelstrom was raging.

The later death of his former Magpies team-mate in Gary Speed also hit him hard.

On his time at Elland Road, but sense of unfulfilment, he said: “I was devastated when I left, I didn’t even want to leave at the time as it was the only thing I knew and I loved the club.

“I came through the youth system from 14-years-old, so to get all the way to the top and then be told you have to leave as the club is going to go bust, you didn’t want to do it.

“(Rio) Ferdinand, (Harry) Kewell, (Mark) Viduka, (Lee) Bowyer, Alan Smith. We had a real top team, and all young – it was like playing with your mates.

“Coming into training, you were having a laugh as well as training and it was amazing. We loved the fans and the fans loved us and we found a rapport which could relate to us as most of us came through the youth system in the side and then got to play for the first team.

“I didn’t want to go to Newcastle, but Bobby Robson was manager, Alan Shearer was a legend, Gary Speed as well..”

Speaking on his sense of loss at the passing of Speed in 2011, he continued: “Gary was an incredible person, he’d do anything for you. He’d pick up the phone and ring you out of the blue.

“I used to keep in contact with him on the phone, and then for that to happen, and it was out of nowhere. I was devastated. I think Newcastle were playing that day and I was watching Shay Given and Craig Bellamy both crying, and it was a real sad time.”

Woodgate swapped St James’ Park for the Bernabeu in August 2004. It should have provided the most glorious chapter of his career at world’s biggest and most famous club in Real Madrid.

Sadly, the opposite applied with his time in Spain bedevilled by horrendous injury fortune.

He observed: “That was the most difficult part of my career in Madrid. I was embarrassed that my body kept letting me down. It was the walk of shame. You come off in a ground of 90,000, and you just want the ground to swallow you up.

“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. Jeez. 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’d written to the club saying he could get me fit. He boiled some grass, put it in cling film and wrapped it round my leg.

“I started wondering if the club thought it was all in my mind and I’m not really that bad? The 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?

“I didn’t really tell people when I was going through a difficult time. I’m one of those people who when they were struggling, didn’t really tell anyone and I’d just try to deal with it myself.”

After hanging up his boots, Woodgate would later delve into management at Boro.

It ended abruptly in June 2020, less than a season after taking over, with the Teessiders in danger of being relegated to the third tier for the first time since 1985-86.

Woodgate was handed a brief that would have tested far more experienced managers. Being the local lad when the club – his club – were struggling meant that he was in the firing line wherever he went out in the community – and took every bad result home.

He said: “I got a lot of abuse from the fans. I’m not intellectually clever, quite basic, and I get called a hell of a lot of names – ‘he’s thick, he can’t talk properly.’ I lost a bit of confidence to be honest with you just as a person.

“It was tough. If you get a lot of abuse online – if you shoot so much mud, some of it sticks.”

On his sacking, he added: “It was a really difficult moment, the team I supported as a kid, played for and then I was the manager, and it was the perfect job. Telling my kids was the hardest thing, because my son just burst out crying because he is a Boro fan.

“It was a blessing in disguise that it was Covid at the time and my son wasn’t at school. I’d have been terrified of him going to school at the time and getting bullied or whatever, your dad’s this, your dad’s that, because all the kids are Boro fans and kids can be quite cruel, so quite fortunately he was off school at the time.”

Woodgate was speaking on the Original Penguin X Campaign Against Living Miserably Under The Surface podcast.