Surely it doesn’t get more impressive
than engineering a comeback from
three goals down to win the Champions
League? That is, unless you measure it
against making Newcastle United feel
like a normal club, albeit occasionally. I
can think of no higher compliment for
Rafa Benitez.
The man from Madrid papered over
cracks that had been smashed in by Mike
Ashley, and actually made supporting the
Magpies something to be proud of once
again. Rafa gave the Newcastle faithful a
little bit of self-respect. Rafa gave us all
hope, and that’s why a remarkable
51,106 fans turned up on average for 23
home games in the 2016-17
Championship season.
The Spaniard could see the club’s
potential, even in such reduced
circumstances, and he wanted this to be
his last long-term project: turn
Newcastle United around and sort it out
from top to bottom. Only a fool would
say no to that offer.
Ashley was getting desperate in 2016,
with the club on course for a second
relegation in eight Premier League seasons
of ownership. Rafa was needed to get the
club back on the gravy train and give the
owner’s retail empire that all-important
worldwide TV exposure.
In convincing him to sign a three-year
deal, Ashley told Benitez that he shared
his vision. Indeed, the club’s owner kept
his word – for one transfer window. Rafa
is a political animal and has experienced
some... er, ‘characters’ throughout his
long managerial career – just nobody
quite like Mike.
Benitez was professional to the very end
and saw out his contract. Despite the shared
vision and love-in with the Newcastle fans,
he had to accept that he was on a hiding to
nothing. Newcastle United are more capable
than most of scoring own goals, but this was
something else entirely.
While Ashley attempts a third relegation
in his 11th Premier League season, the six
clubs Rafa managed before rocking up at
St James’ Park are now in the Champions
League group stage this season. Benitez
shared the dreams of Newcastle’s fans.
They have turned to dust.Mark Jensen, co-founder of The Mag, shares with FFT the Toon Army’s love for Benitez
THE VIEW FROM nEWCASTLE
ImagesGetty Imagesthey came to Europe we knew where they put penalties. Then you
have an advantage.”
Benitez is rarely an outwardly emotional man on the touchline, but
he remembers the emotions that followed victory in Istanbul. “I was
proud inside,” he says. “It was the feeling of doing a good job after
everything you’ve worked on – preparation, analysis, team talks, your
staff working so hard to give you all the information, then making the
right decisions. You feel proud of a lot of things.
“Just talking in English at half-time was quite difficult for me back
then. When it was 2-0, I was making my notes in English, thinking,
‘We’re 2-0 down – what am I going to say?’ Then we conceded the
third goal before half-time and I thought, ‘OK, that’s even worse...’
“Then you have to go in and talk. Believe me, that wasn’t easy.
Do you speak any language apart from English? You have to say,
‘Come on, wake up!’, but you need to do it in the right way with the
right pronunciation.
“I’ll give you a funny story. That year, we were practising set-pieces
at Melwood. It was a windy day and I was telling Steven Gerrard, ‘Be
careful with the wine’, because I thought ‘wind’ was pronounced
‘wine’. I’d say, ‘Be careful with the wine’ and they’d start laughing. ‘Be
careful with the wine?!’ The pronunciation changed everything. I
realised, ‘OK, it’s wind’.
“The year after that, we played Olympiacos in a pre-season friendly.
For a year, I had been saying to the players, ‘When you give the ball
away, press when losing’. Before the Olympiacos game, Peter Crouch
was a new player and I said, ‘If we give the ball away, what do we
have to do, Peter?’ He said, ‘Close it down’. I said, ‘No’. I asked Dietmar
Hamann and he said, ‘Close it down’. I said, ‘No!’ I asked Djibril Cisse
and he said, ‘Press when losing’. I said, ‘Right!’ They all started
laughing, because ‘close it down’ meant the same, but at the time I
didn’t know that!
“Those two things were funny – it was a training session and a
friendly – but imagine you make a mistake with the words you say at
half-time in the Champions League final when you’re losing 3-0, and
everyone laughs and you lose their concentration. I had to choose my
words carefully and say, ‘Calm down. Relax.’ People had their heads
down. I said, ‘We’ve been working so hard to be here and we’ve got
nothing to lose now, 3-0 down. We have 45 minutes to change it. Get
your heads up and start thinking that if we score one goal, we’ll be
back in the game.’
“Then I told my assistant, Pako Ayestaran, ‘Get Didi Hamann
ready to come on.’ I told Djimi Traore, ‘OK, get changed and have a
shower, we’ll play with three at the back: Carragher, Sami Hyypia and
Steve Finnan.’
“I explained everything, and when I finished going through the
game plan for the second half, Didi went to do a warm-up with Pako.
“I was walking around, and then I noticed the physio, Dave Galley,
with Finnan. I said, ‘What’s going on?’ Dave said, ‘I don’t think he can
play 45 minutes.’ I said, ‘What?!’ I had already made one substitution
in the first half, because Harry Kewell was injured and I brought on
Vladimir Smicer. Didi would be the second one, and if I had to make
another substitution in the second half, I didn’t have any way to react
at 3-0 down. So at the last minute I had to say, ‘OK, Djimi Traore,
come back.’ Then the three at the back had Djimi instead of Finnan.
“People think we were lucky, but no, we were reacting. You have
your staff analysing things, but you have to react. We did it: we put
three at the back and were much better in the second half.
“They had Kaka between the lines and two strikers: Andriy
Shevchenko and Hernan Crespo. In the first half, we weren’t
controlling the middle. At the beginning I thought that with Xabi
Alonso and Gerrard, we’d have two players with quality, but Kaka was
free because Stevie normally goes box-to-box. When we put Didi on,
we had more control, Gerrard was on the right and everywhere, and
we had more balance. We were controlling them better. We were
more dangerous in the wide areas.
“To be fair, before kick-off we told them, ‘Don’t give the ball away in
the first minute.’ Then we gave the ball away for the free-kick and
conceded in the first minute! That was against the plan. But the
strength was that we reacted well, then the players reacted well.”
Benitez has long been considered one of the world’s great
tacticians. He proved it in that Champions League final.for life. That night, his Reds recovered from 3-0 down at half-time to
draw 3-3 with Milan in the Champions League final and then win on
penalties, ending his first season in England. “I’ve met Liverpool fans
more than anyone in China; they always remember Istanbul,” he
says, smiling. Who could forget it?
“That was the most emotional final ever – maybe the most
emotional final there will ever be. We were 3-0 down, and that Milan
team was so good. Some people say, ‘Oh, you were lucky’. No. We
were not lucky. You have to win a lot of games to get to the final, and
then we won the final.
“People talk about the Bruce Grobbelaar moves and Jamie
Carragher telling Jerzy Dudek to do it, but we’d also worked on
penalties with our goalkeeping coach, Jose Manuel Ochotorena. We
knew four of the Milan penalty-takers and which way they liked to go.
That’s a great advantage for a keeper. The next year, we won the FA
Cup on penalties, and people said that we were lucky again. But no,
because Pepe Reina knew about West Ham’s penalty-takers. That
means your staff are doing their work.
“Now, everyone has the stats, but 15, 20, 30 years ago, I had a
penalty database for players in Argentina and Brazil, so that whenFourFourTwo.com The Managers 65RAFA
BEn ITEZ