If even Robert Huth, known as one of the toughest defenders in the game, wants you on his side, you must be a serious force to reckon with. Under manager Tony Pulis at Stoke City, Arsenal players and others would often tense up as they faced the powerful Stoke squad in the tunnel at the Britannia Stadium. But there was one Stoke player who commanded even more respect among his own teammates—a player that could make even the Stoke giants tread lightly.
When asked on TalkSport who would emerge victorious in a last-man-standing brawl among his former Stoke teammates, Huth quickly named Ricardo Fuller. “Ricardo Fuller, I would say,” he replied confidently. “He was a strong boy. He was strong even when he wasn’t 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 things got heated, you wanted him on your side.” Clearly, Fuller wasn’t just respected for his physicality—he had an aura that kept everyone in line.
But size and raw strength weren’t the only qualities Huth admired in his teammates. When he left Stoke for Leicester City in 2015, he found himself playing alongside N’Golo Kante, a midfielder with an entirely different kind of toughness. Standing at just 5 feet 6 inches, Kante may not have looked intimidating at first glance. “I remember the first time I met Kante,” Huth said. “If I say underwhelming, I don’t mean it disrespectfully, but among the big boys, he was smaller than the average player we had at the time.” But Kante’s impact was felt within minutes of the first training session.
In that very first drill, Kante’s relentless energy and skill quickly changed everyone’s impression of him. “Session one, we did possession, and he just kept nicking the ball,” Huth recalled. “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.” By the end of the session, frustrated players were trying to take him down, but Kante’s agility made it nearly impossible.
Before long, Kante was playing all over the pitch—on the wing, in central midfield, wherever he was needed. “We had to find a way to get him in the team,” Huth explained. “In our meetings after games, it was just about him winning the ball back for us. That was the post-game talk. That’s how good he was.” In Huth’s career, he’d encountered many tough players, but Kante’s unique skillset and tireless spirit stood out as something exceptional.
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