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Wes Morgan was told to lose an enormous amount of weight to make it as a footballer
Published 10:26 16 Apr 2016 BST
Updated 12:30 16 Apr 2016 BST
Homesport
Who ate all the pies?
Wes Morgan did, as he was trying to make it as a professional footballer it seems. The Leicester City captain is just weeks away from lifting the Premier League title after the greatest fairytale story of all-time in the English top flight. The centre-half and his team-mates were this time last year scrambling for their Premier League survival and are now just a few games away from being crowned champions. It's a world away from Morgan's early football career, as he struggled to even make it as a professional footballer.
The player had been released from Nott’s County at the end of his youth contract at 16 before getting an opportunity at Nottingham Forest.
In an interview in today's Daily Mail, he admits that while he impressed scouts at the City ground, the coaches felt there was one key issue holding him back from becoming a full-timer with the former European Champions.
"A week-long trial turned into two weeks, then a month, but when they asked me to stay until the end of the season, they sat me down and said: ‘Wes, first thing’s first, you need to get in shape.’ I weighed 16-and-a-half stone and got told to lose two stone — so I was doing extra running every day and I went on a diet. "The onus was put on me though. I remember doing laps of the City Ground on my own every day and, when the youth team played games, I just ran! It was tough. I learned from that. When I signed for Leicester, they thought I could still trim down a bit but again the onus was on me. I do my own work in the gym and keep at a weight that’s right for me. I’ll always be a big guy though."
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