Robert Huth picks the Stoke City hard man ‘no one messed with’You must be pretty tough if even Robert Huth wants to make sure you’re on his side.
Many an Arsenal player quivered when they looked at the Stoke City team lining up in the tunnel at the then-Britannia Stadium under Tony Pulis. But what kind of beast could make even those Stoke giants tread carefully?
The answer is one of their own. Robert Huth was asked this week on TalkSport who would have won a royal rumble-style last man standing event from that much-loved squad and he didn’t have to think very long to come up with a definitive answer.
“Ricardo Fuller, I would say,” he said. “He was a strong boy. He was strong when he wasn’t even angry. Can you imagine what he was like when he was angry? No one messed with Ric. He had the respect of the boys. If it kicks off, you want him on your side.”
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Huth said: “Kante was just a joke of a player. I remember the first time I met Kante. If I say underwhelming I don’t mean it in a disrespectful way but going among the big boys, he was smaller than the average player we had at the time. It only took 10 minutes of training to realise he was not to be messed with. I remember everyone looking into each other’s eyes and saying, ‘Ooof, this kid.’
“Session one we did possession and he just kept nicking the ball. The harder you tackled him, the more he thrived on it. He always wins the ball. I don’t know how he does it. For a short player he’s got the longest legs ever. He just nicks it. Players were getting so frustrated with him and by the end of the session they were just trying to kick him and they couldn’t even kick him because he was so nimble, so quick.
“We had to find a way to get him in the team. At first he was playing on the wing because he was so good. He was playing on the wing, playing in the middle, he was playing everywhere. The first couple of games we had meetings after the game and it was just him winning the ball back for us. That was the team meeting after the game. That’s how good he was.”
