‘Different class’: Woodgate names 10-cap man ahead of Kewell as the best he played with at Leeds

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Speaking on Jamie Carragher’s Greatest Game podcast, Jonathan Woodgate has named Stephen McPhail as the best player he ever played with at Leeds United.

Woodgate was at Leeds with some of the best players in the country at the time with the likes of Mark Viduka, Rio Ferdinand, Robbie Fowler and Lucas Radebe passing through Elland Road during his tenure in Yorkshire.

However, Woodgate believes Stephen McPhail was better than any of the aforementioned names, saying that he was the best player he’d played alongside at United.

Carragher and Woodgate were discussing Leeds’ 1997 FA Youth Cup win and the discussion got onto Harry Kewell.

“Was he the best player you played with at Leeds, Harry Kewell?” Jamie Carragher asked.

“Stephen McPhail, he was in my youth team Stephen McPhail he used to have control of the midfield.”

Carragher would then relay a story that Steven Gerrard told him about McPhail, before Woodgate carried on.

“Left footer, silky on the eye, he had weight of pass, timing, everything, he could just control a game, and he was loved at Leeds,” Woodgate continued.

“But, he made a lot of appearances at Leeds, but he didn’t quite have athleticism, you know what I mean.

“Even the youth coaches thought he was going to be the best, he was different class Macca, different class.”

Woodgate certainly knows his stuff when it comes to football, after all, he spotted Ruben Dias as a teenager when he was a scout at Liverpool, but it still comes as a surprise to hear McPhail getting this type of praise.

The Irishman didn’t pull up any trees at Leeds, and his career wasn’t that of a top quality midfielder, spending a lot of his time in the Championship rather than the Premier League.

The fact that he only got 10 caps for the Republic of Ireland is also rather surprising as Woodgate clearly believes he was a top talent.

As the ex-Real Madrid man says, he didn’t have the athleticism to be a bona fide Premier League star, but when it comes to technical ability, it sounds as though very few players at Leeds could hold a torch to the Irishman.