T
he rain is pouring down on the Wirral, but we have a
treat in store. Rafa Benitez wants to show us his
holiday photos.
Normally, such a prospect would fill FourFourTwo
with dread; memories are immediately flooding back
of family gatherings during our childhood, sitting
through slide after slide of vacation snaps from Corfu
or Fuengirola. But things are rather more interesting
when the man sat in front of you is a Champions
League-winning manager.
“This is the hotel in Hong Kong,” says Benitez, swiping
through photos. “This next one is Chongqing from the
plane. There was a storm as we landed, but the bridge
over the river was like the one in Newcastle.”
All right, technically they are not holiday photos.
Rafa is enthusiastically showing us images from his first few months
in China as manager of Dalian Yifang. The Hong Kong trip was to pick
up his visa when he accepted the job in July; the flying visit to
Chongqing was to bag a 3-1 away win in the Chinese Super League.
He’s now back in England for a few days during a break in the
season – much to the surprise of a staff member at Hickory’s
Smokehouse in West Kirby, where Benitez has suggested meeting FFT
this Wednesday morning. “Who’s coming?” the bartender enquired, as
our photographer started setting up ahead of the interviewee’s arrival.
“Our bosses did say it was Rafa, but I didn’t believe them.”
This quiet corner of Merseyside does seem an unexpected spot to
find one of the world’s most famous managers – particularly when
his day job is 5,250 miles away – but his family remained in the area
after his six-year spell at Liverpool ended in 2010. Benitez points and
says, “Fifty metres up that hill is the school my daughter went to, and
at one stage, when I didn’t have a job, I went to coach the kids on a
Friday. One of the parents asked me, ‘Would you mind?’ I said, ‘OK’,
and did some training sessions and games. At one of the games, one
of the parents from the other team said, ‘Oh, you have a professional
coach!’ But I like to coach.”
That is very apparent as Benitez begins to talk about his role at
Dalian Yifang. He’s frank enough to admit that he might not haveAbove Less than
nine months after
managing Real
Madrid, Benitez
leads out a side
away at Barnsley
Right “Would you
like to see more
of my slides, FFT?”
gone to Asia at all had things been different at Newcastle United this
summer. But once he takes a job, he pours his heart and soul into it –
and it’s clear he has been doing exactly that in Dalian, a port city of
more than six million people in the east of China, not far from the
North Korean border.
Just like when he first moved to England, then to Italy with
Inter Milan and Napoli, he has been trying to embrace every aspect
of the experience.
“The main thing about China is the culture – 5,000 years of it,” he
says. “When I go to a new place, my idea is to find out what’s going
on. I did it when I came to Liverpool; it was easier here because I’d
already been following the Beatles. You go to Chelsea and try to
understand what’s going on there, then you go to Newcastle and talk
with the Geordies to see how they feel.
“I was lucky because Napoli, Liverpool, Newcastle and Dalian Yifang
are similar. They’re not top, top sides – when I arrived at Liverpool,
they weren’t – and you have to fight, to compete against the sides
who spend more money. You have to create something. We did that
at Liverpool. We did that everywhere.”62 The Managers FourFourTwo.comRAFA
BEn ITEZ