Manchester United coach Jonathan Woodgate opened up on his time as a player at Real Madrid, labelling it a “failure” after his transfer nightmare
10:00, 24 Jan 2026Updated 10:40, 24 Jan 2026
Jonathan Woodgate celebrated his birthday this week(Image: )
A Manchester United coach, who was once a transfer megaflop, injected botox and did ‘1,000 sit ups daily’ to try and revitalise his career.
Jonathan Woodgate’s time at Real Madrid might go down in infamy after his debut hell and subsequent injury woes. However, Woodgate, who celebrated his 45th birthday on Wednesday, is now part of Michael Carrick’s backroom staff at United.
It was during his early playing days when he then grabbed headlines when he secured a shock £13.4million move from Newcastle to La Liga heavyweights Real Madrid. However, fitness issues dominating his Spanish adventure.
Jonathan Woodgate is now a coach at Manchester United(Image: Stu Forster/Getty Images)
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“Failure is the one word I’d use about Madrid,” Woodgate admitted on the Original Penguin X Campaign Against Living Miserably Under The Surface podcast. “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.”
Woodgate revealed that his persistent back problems were triggering additional injuries elsewhere in his body, restricting him to merely 14 appearances across his two seasons at Real Madrid.
Jonathan Woodgate flopped with Real Madrid(Image: No credit)
The club attempted everything to help Woodgate recover his fitness, even forcing him to complete an extraordinary number of daily sit-ups.
Woodgate expressed doubts about the efficacy of his daily exercise routine, saying: “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?'”
He continued: “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.”
The defender also shared how the club tried everything to get him fit, from physiotherapy to unconventional methods: “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.”
In disbelief, 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 ended his nightmare stint in Madrid in the summer of 2006 and made a triumphant return to English football with his boyhood club, Middlesbrough. Unfortunately, the Spanish team clinched a La Liga title shortly after his departure.
“The year I left, they won La Liga, and I’m not gonna lie, I was absolutely devastated because I wasn’t there,” admitted 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.”
