FIGHT CLUB!
HOW MANCINI TOOK CITY BOXING – APART FROM ONE...
ROBERTO Mancini would push all his City players to do boxing sessions as part of their fitness regime … apart from one!
And former Blues sport therapist Paul Webster has revealed that several of the players who he took on the pads were more than a little handy when it came to donning the gloves.
He even agreed to referee a fun boxing match between two City ‘heavyweights,’ unbeknown to the management.
Mancini liked boxing as a means of increasing fitness levels, especially for players returning from injury, and Webster would work with the manager himself for sessions.
But there was one player who he discouraged from donning the gloves.
“I did training with all of the lads – Vincent Kompany, Yaya Toure, Wayne Bridge, Roque Santa Cruz. I used it as part of their rehab,” says Webster, who is now offering physio, fitness and massage as part of the community hub of Burnage Rugby Club in Heaton Mersey.
“As they were coming back to fitness I would take them for boxing and bring up their fitness level.
“Mancini loved it and would try to get the players to put on the gloves.
“But never Mario, as he would fool around and start kicking me. Mancini would tell me to forget him when it came to boxing!”
So who could have been contenders when it came to climbing inside the ropes?
“A young lad called Sean Tse, who is in Hong Kong at the minute, was the best,” said Webster.
“He could have been a boxer without a shadow of a doubt. His mum was a bouncer, so he had the environment around him.
“You’d never know to look at him, but everything was right – his agility, movement, his punch and range of punching.”
Tse certainly had the pedigree – he was born in Salford of a n English mother and Hong Kongese father, and is now a defender with South China in the Hong Kong Premier League.
“Bridge had the fitness but I’m not sure he would have liked getting clipped on the nose,” added Webster.
“Vincent Kompany has got amazing technique, you can tell he has done some before because he is a really technical boxer.
“One of the hardest with the gloves on was Benjani – he would punch holes in brick walls, just a naturally hard guy from Zimbabwe. Nobody messed about with him.”
The banter led to a secret bout at one point with two of City’s real tough nuts squaring up for a few rounds. “At one time Emmanuel Adebayor had a little ding-dong with Kolo Toure, a bit of fun,” said Webster. “They put on the gloves and I had to referee it. “We had to keep things like that quiet, of course, but it was a good little go and I awarded the bout to Adebayor because of his jab. “Kolo was trying to get inside and use his power but couldn’t get near. We had loads of fun with the boxing.” And Webster, who learned the ropes as a physical training instructor in the Army before joining City in 2004, still utilises his skills, but now for a wide range of people rather than just millionaire footballers. “I love the diversity these days - I go from boxing with Micah Richards to treating an 80-year-old woman with bad feet to training a group of ten-year-olds,” he says. “And I have some of the top older-age runners in the country, and top cyclists coming here. “I’m so proud that I had a guy who was overweight for years doing the Manchester 10k six months later.”