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Rafael Benitez

Jesse Pinkman

by Jesse Pinkman
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The Fish

The Fish

Posted
Posted

Sky Bet and the Football League are going to milk Rafa/NUFC for all its worth :lol: Is he the 'biggest name' Championship manager yet?

Surely the first time there's been 2 Champions League winning managers in the 2nd tier of English football?

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Tiotes Witch Doctor

Tiotes Witch Doctor

Posted
Posted

Still amazed that one man coming in can have so much effect on everything at the club, I listen to him speak and I believe every word he says and I have confidence that he will deliver us some success given time.

 

This kind of turnaround in a matter of months is massive, the club feels like it did in the Bobby days again and its a great thing.

 

Obviously a load of work to do between now and the end of the season but its great going into a season with full enjoyment and hope for the future.

 

Long may it continue.

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AyeDubbleYoo

AyeDubbleYoo

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I think there are two ways to be successful, but the other one requires an owner and board with a clear vision and a constant list of managers they want (Southampton). We obviously don't have that so we need a manager who can control everything.

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Guest Howaythetoon

Guest Howaythetoon

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Was in Liverpool again today and fucking hell man, we will be their second fave team soon if talking to a few Scousers is anything to go by. He is a god there, think of KK with us and then add some! Everton fans massively respect him as well.

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Altamullan

Altamullan

Posted
Posted

Given bothGullit and Rafa have been Chelsea and Newcastle managers, thought I'd compare their records.

 

For Chelsea Ruud managed 83 games, with a win rate of 49%  and won the FA Cup (1997).

For Chelsea Rafa managed 48 games, with a win rate of 58% and won the Europa League (2013).

 

For Newcastle Ruud managed 52 games, with a win rate of 35% and managed runners-up in FA Cup (1999).

If the relative performance for Chelsea matched their performance for Newcastle, then....

 

For Newcastle Rafa manages 30 games, with a win rate of 41% and somehow squeezes in a 'Cup' runners-up.

 

Rafa has 10 games under his belt, with a 30%win rate.

 

(I know it's a meaningless comparison--btw--but thought I'd make it anyway!).

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LionOfGosforth

LionOfGosforth

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Will the sky interview be going up tonight or tomorrow?

 

This the one you mean ?

 

http://www.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/football/10523288/benitez-targets-promotion

 

Love listening to this man, so professional and calm. Funny thing is though, he has a way of speaking without ever really saying anything much at all. Just things like "we must be confident and patient, and do the things we want" etc. Every interview is a masterclass in serenity, confidence and giving away absolutely nothing, you just trust the man 100%.

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littlelunchbox

littlelunchbox

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http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/craig-bellamy-lifts-lid-life-4041459

 

long read, enjoy.

 

 

 

Bellamy on Benitez

 

When I walked into Melwood, the Liverpool training ground, I felt as though everything in my career had been leading to this moment. It was the first time I had ever been there and it was like being in a dream.

 

This was where Bill Shankly had worked. This was the turf that Bob Paisley had walked on. This was where Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush and Robbie Fowler had trained. The facilities might have been new and state-of-the-art but the place reeked of glorious history.

 

A lot of things went through my mind. It was only a year ago that my name was mud and everybody had been branding me a troublemaker and saying I was untouchable.

 

I had undergone four operations on my patella tendons and two on my cruciates. I had suffered from episodes of depression.

 

I even thought of sitting in my garage in Norwich on Christmas Eve, doing my leg presses. This is why I did it. To get here. To get to Melwood. To sign for Liverpool.

 

I did my medical stuff and then I went upstairs to see Rafa Benitez in his office. I sat down. He was business-like.

 

He produced a cutting from a newspaper. The page was dominated by a picture of me with a snarl on my face. Most of the time back then I’d have a snarl on my face. It was nothing unusual.

 

“Why are you looking like this?” he said. I told him I couldn’t remember.

 

 

 

 

“You can’t play like this,” he said. “This kind of aggression is not what you need as a player.”

 

I told him I understood. The memory of the game where the incident had happened started to come back to me. It was a match against Sunderland the previous season. Sunderland’s goalkeeper, Kelvin Davis, had shoved me in the back. I had a bad back anyway at that time. I didn’t take too kindly to being shoved in it.

 

I didn’t mention any of that to Rafa. I could sense it probably wasn’t the right time.

 

Then he got a board out and started quizzing me about footballing systems. What did I think about this formation or that formation, the positives, the negatives, the benefits of playing between the lines.

 

Where would I run if a teammate had the ball in a certain position. He asked me about every scenario under the sun. And every answer I gave, even if it was correct, was twisted into another answer.

 

“When you play up top,” he said, “if this player has it, where would you go?” It was like a multiple choice test. “I’d run to the left,” I said. “Yeah, but run right first, then go left,” he said. The other players told me later that was just typical Rafa.

 

I was a bit taken aback by his attitude. It was like being in the presence of an unsmiling headmaster. The atmosphere at the club seemed strange, too. It was a place of business and a place of work. There weren’t very many people smiling. There wasn’t a lot of laughter around the place. Even the physios were on edge when they were doing the medical. Everyone seemed uncomfortable and wary.

 

The next day, I met Pako Ayestaran, Rafa’s assistant and the fitness coach. The fitness routines were not that imaginative.

 

It was army style, really. Long, plodding runs mainly. It was very professional with heart monitors and fitness belts but there was no camaraderie while they took place. It was all double sessions, tactical work, standing in position, walk-throughs of tactical play. Rafa oversaw it all.

 

A lot of Rafa’s tactical work was very, very good. He was impressively astute and I learned a lot from him in that area. But he could not come to terms with the idea that some players need an element of freedom and that we express ourselves on the pitch in different ways. He was very rigid.

 

He worked on specific moves over and over again. It was a bit like American Football in that respect.

 

Rafa wanted people running designated routes when the ball was in a certain place, just as he had been explaining the first time I spoke to him in his office. The winger comes inside, the full-back overlaps, the forward has to run near post every time.

 

There was no allowance for the fact that your marker might have worked out what you are doing after a few attempts. You had to keep doing it because it might make space for someone else. I felt like a decoy runner half the time.

 

But I did learn a lot. Defensively, Rafa was exceptional. He was very good on the opposition and how to nullify their threat and stifle their forward players.

 

He would use video analysis to go through the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses. Our preparation for games was extremely thorough. Nothing was left to chance. He was the first foreign manager I worked under and I learned quite a bit.

 

But there was no scope for spontaneity. None. He distrusted that. Of all the managers I have worked with, he trusted his players the least. That’s just how he was. There was not much enjoyment. There were no small-sided games or anything like that.

 

Everything was tactical with timed drills and routines.

 

It was a bit like Groundhog Day. You came in and did the same stuff over and over again.

 

Sometimes strikers like to do finishing at the end of a session but once the whistle was blown at the end of training, Rafa would personally collect the balls and put them in the bag and no one was allowed to do any extra work. He was a total control-freak.

 

Rotation was something else I had to get used to under Rafa.

 

One week you would play, the next you wouldn’t. None of the players would ever know until an hour before kick-off who was going to start. I found that hard to adjust to. I found everything about it difficult.

 

I prepared as if I was going to start because I felt that was the professional thing to do. But I need to get myself into a certain frame of mind when I play. I cut myself off from everybody around me on the day of the game. I get intense about it. In those circumstances, it is very difficult if you are then told an hour before the match that you’re on the bench.

 

By preparing as though I was going to play, I was also ensuring that the disappointment would be even greater when I didn’t play. So then I started telling myself I had to change tack. I stopped building myself up too much so that it would be easier to deal with the disappointment of not being selected.

 

But then when I did start, it almost came as a shock to me. I had an hour to get prepared. That was it.

 

Rafa said he would not release the starting eleven until an hour before kick-off because he didn’t want to give the opposition an advantage. What he meant was that he didn’t want anyone to leak the team early and he didn’t trust players to keep it secret.

 

He didn’t trust the players on the pitch so he certainly wasn’t going to trust them off it.

 

 

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BottledDog

BottledDog

Posted
Posted

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/craig-bellamy-lifts-lid-life-4041459

 

long read, enjoy.

 

 

 

Bellamy on Benitez

 

When I walked into Melwood, the Liverpool training ground, I felt as though everything in my career had been leading to this moment. It was the first time I had ever been there and it was like being in a dream.

 

This was where Bill Shankly had worked. This was the turf that Bob Paisley had walked on. This was where Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush and Robbie Fowler had trained. The facilities might have been new and state-of-the-art but the place reeked of glorious history.

 

A lot of things went through my mind. It was only a year ago that my name was mud and everybody had been branding me a troublemaker and saying I was untouchable.

 

I had undergone four operations on my patella tendons and two on my cruciates. I had suffered from episodes of depression.

 

I even thought of sitting in my garage in Norwich on Christmas Eve, doing my leg presses. This is why I did it. To get here. To get to Melwood. To sign for Liverpool.

 

I did my medical stuff and then I went upstairs to see Rafa Benitez in his office. I sat down. He was business-like.

 

He produced a cutting from a newspaper. The page was dominated by a picture of me with a snarl on my face. Most of the time back then I’d have a snarl on my face. It was nothing unusual.

 

“Why are you looking like this?” he said. I told him I couldn’t remember.

 

 

 

 

“You can’t play like this,” he said. “This kind of aggression is not what you need as a player.”

 

I told him I understood. The memory of the game where the incident had happened started to come back to me. It was a match against Sunderland the previous season. Sunderland’s goalkeeper, Kelvin Davis, had shoved me in the back. I had a bad back anyway at that time. I didn’t take too kindly to being shoved in it.

 

I didn’t mention any of that to Rafa. I could sense it probably wasn’t the right time.

 

Then he got a board out and started quizzing me about footballing systems. What did I think about this formation or that formation, the positives, the negatives, the benefits of playing between the lines.

 

Where would I run if a teammate had the ball in a certain position. He asked me about every scenario under the sun. And every answer I gave, even if it was correct, was twisted into another answer.

 

“When you play up top,” he said, “if this player has it, where would you go?” It was like a multiple choice test. “I’d run to the left,” I said. “Yeah, but run right first, then go left,” he said. The other players told me later that was just typical Rafa.

 

I was a bit taken aback by his attitude. It was like being in the presence of an unsmiling headmaster. The atmosphere at the club seemed strange, too. It was a place of business and a place of work. There weren’t very many people smiling. There wasn’t a lot of laughter around the place. Even the physios were on edge when they were doing the medical. Everyone seemed uncomfortable and wary.

 

The next day, I met Pako Ayestaran, Rafa’s assistant and the fitness coach. The fitness routines were not that imaginative.

 

It was army style, really. Long, plodding runs mainly. It was very professional with heart monitors and fitness belts but there was no camaraderie while they took place. It was all double sessions, tactical work, standing in position, walk-throughs of tactical play. Rafa oversaw it all.

 

A lot of Rafa’s tactical work was very, very good. He was impressively astute and I learned a lot from him in that area. But he could not come to terms with the idea that some players need an element of freedom and that we express ourselves on the pitch in different ways. He was very rigid.

 

He worked on specific moves over and over again. It was a bit like American Football in that respect.

 

Rafa wanted people running designated routes when the ball was in a certain place, just as he had been explaining the first time I spoke to him in his office. The winger comes inside, the full-back overlaps, the forward has to run near post every time.

 

There was no allowance for the fact that your marker might have worked out what you are doing after a few attempts. You had to keep doing it because it might make space for someone else. I felt like a decoy runner half the time.

 

But I did learn a lot. Defensively, Rafa was exceptional. He was very good on the opposition and how to nullify their threat and stifle their forward players.

 

He would use video analysis to go through the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses. Our preparation for games was extremely thorough. Nothing was left to chance. He was the first foreign manager I worked under and I learned quite a bit.

 

But there was no scope for spontaneity. None. He distrusted that. Of all the managers I have worked with, he trusted his players the least. That’s just how he was. There was not much enjoyment. There were no small-sided games or anything like that.

 

Everything was tactical with timed drills and routines.

 

It was a bit like Groundhog Day. You came in and did the same stuff over and over again.

 

Sometimes strikers like to do finishing at the end of a session but once the whistle was blown at the end of training, Rafa would personally collect the balls and put them in the bag and no one was allowed to do any extra work. He was a total control-freak.

 

Rotation was something else I had to get used to under Rafa.

 

One week you would play, the next you wouldn’t. None of the players would ever know until an hour before kick-off who was going to start. I found that hard to adjust to. I found everything about it difficult.

 

I prepared as if I was going to start because I felt that was the professional thing to do. But I need to get myself into a certain frame of mind when I play. I cut myself off from everybody around me on the day of the game. I get intense about it. In those circumstances, it is very difficult if you are then told an hour before the match that you’re on the bench.

 

By preparing as though I was going to play, I was also ensuring that the disappointment would be even greater when I didn’t play. So then I started telling myself I had to change tack. I stopped building myself up too much so that it would be easier to deal with the disappointment of not being selected.

 

But then when I did start, it almost came as a shock to me. I had an hour to get prepared. That was it.

 

Rafa said he would not release the starting eleven until an hour before kick-off because he didn’t want to give the opposition an advantage. What he meant was that he didn’t want anyone to leak the team early and he didn’t trust players to keep it secret.

 

He didn’t trust the players on the pitch so he certainly wasn’t going to trust them off it.

 

Cracking first read of the morning that. Thanks. :thup:

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