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Robert Huth became the first of Leicester City’s title-winning heroes to hang up his boots but he’s not regretting his decision to call it quits.

Huth was released by City last summer after a final season decimated by injury and the centre-back announced his retirement last month.

It came with typical Huth humour, the German calling out a Twitter charlatan.

“I woke up one morning and on my notifications there was this guy saying I was about to join Derby,” Huth told The Sun.

“It was total b******t. I hadn’t kicked a ball for four months. I had to put him straight.

“It was great for 17 years but it’s done. I don’t have to cling on to being a footballer any more.

“You know yourself, you make the decision and 10 seconds later, there’s a big sigh of relief. You don’t have to be a macho a******e any more, as can happen in such a competitive environment.

“I remember watching Liverpool v Man City last month and thinking: ‘I’m so happy I’m on the sofa. There’s no way I could keep up.’”

Huth won three Premier League titles and earned 19 caps for Germany during his career, but it is the glory with City that will stick with him.

“We were seven points from safety when I arrived from Stoke,” he said. “It was the best thing I have been part of – from bottom of the league to champions in 18 months.

“When I have a s*** day, I put on YouTube. I just put in ‘L’ and up comes Leicester.

“Most players want to win something and I’m buzzing that I did. In 20 years’ time, we will be sitting here and still talking about it.

“Most days I wake up smiling.”

Having left the club last summer, Huth watched the tragic events of last October’s helicopter crash from the outside.

(Image: Michael Regan/Getty Images)

But the centre-back knew City’s late chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha well and reiterated what others have said before.

“I was watching the (West Ham) match on TV,” Huth said. “Suddenly they said: ‘We have some really disturbing news.’

“What a legend he was. He loved being around the lads.

“The position he was in, as such a mega-wealthy guy, most guys would say ‘yes’ to him.

“Then he would be stepping into the dressing room and there would be 6ft 4in guys grabbing him, joking with him and treating him as one of us and vice-versa.

“He genuinely loved being with the lads, having the complete opposite of his business life where he says and they do. The stuff you hear was all true. The donations he made, so generous. It’s just a shame that it took a tragedy for all that to come out.

“(During the title campaign) he was giddy. He was loving it. How could you not?

“People were singing his name. We are lucky that people know us for what we do. He was not used to it. He was getting recognition.”

This season’s ding-dong battle at the top of the Premier League between Liverpool and Manchester City reminds Huth of Leicester’s rivalry with Spurs.

Surprisingly, given his hard-man reputation, a fear of failure was one of the defender’s biggest sources of motivation.

“What we managed to do well at Leicester was to block everything out,” he said. “We didn’t listen to anyone.

“We were in a unique position where everyone wanted us to win it, except Spurs supporters. With bigger teams it’s different.

“There are haters, people who don’t want Liverpool. For us, it was about blocking the positivity out and people telling us how great we were and focusing on the job, doing the training.

“It’s hard to hear people saying: ‘Liverpool aren’t going to do it.’ But the challenge is the same – block it out, go game by game.

“But we had extra pressure on us because the club had never done it. It was worse pressure.

“With eight games to go, you know you could do something amazing. You don’t want to look back in 10 years, look at the table with you in first with four games to go and then finish third.

“That would have been a real f***** when you were 45 and telling your kids.

“We were playing after Spurs most of the time, so the gap was always smaller.

“We watched so many Spurs games together, me and Kasper (Schmeichel) and Simmo (Danny Simpson).

“It was like: ‘Lose, make it a bit easier for us!’ But they kept on winning.

“To get a chance to do what we did, you don’t get it very often.

“Fear of failure was my number one energy source. It made me super-focused.”