Rafa Watch

[little dave hedgehog]

between inter and lfc club, they've hired roy 3 times and sacked rafa twice.

no wonder neither moratti nor purslow have been able to get to the top and stay there

[Chrono]

Sky Sports saying he has been sacked. Haven't read the thread so might be old news:

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,195...606655,00.html

[Bender]

Rafael Benitez's future as Inter Milan manager is in serious doubt after the Italian club described the current situation as "a mess".
Former Liverpool boss Benitez led Inter to Club World Cup victory on Saturday, but they are seventh in Serie A after winning the last five titles.
Benitez denied that he had been sacked on Monday amid reports to the contrary.
Inter president Massimo Moratti could not clarify the situation on Wednesday but said discussions were ongoing.
"We are trying to understand what's going on, this situation is a bit of a mess," said Moratti. "Everything that happened was a bit unexpected, we are considering every point of view."
And asked about the timing of any official announcement, he added: "Nothing is expected today."

[RedReet]

Arn's been quite the busy man.

All in block capitals and similar hand writing.

[Bender]

Roy Hodgson on Rafa returning as Liverpool manager
CLICK

[Shaggy]

LMAO! His immediate response to the question ...he's such a narky, defensive cunt

[badpiggy]

Arrogant Rafa's fall has been rapid even by Italy standards
Wednesday December 22 2010

Current evidence, admittedly, is less than compelling, but there may be a day when Rafa Benitez runs out of other people to blame. Then, if he has time, he might just be able to rebuild a little credibility.

Meanwhile, you have to wonder where he went wrong.

Getting on a plane to Milan and replacing Jose Mourinho plainly wasn't an act of genius, but, of course, it goes back a lot further and runs much deeper than that.

Overweening arrogance is the most plausible explanation for the speed with which he has translated the reputation he gained while winning two La Liga titles with Valencia and the Champions League with Liverpool into a level of posturing that is now little short of surreal.

It is all the more bizarre under the shadow of a sacking by Internazionale, which would be humiliatingly swift even by Italian standards.

Most careers in football tend to erode down the years. They get chipped away by the rigours of maintaining a level of performance, constantly having to reproduce the best and the sharpest of your ability. But in Benitez's case the process could hardly have been faster had it been spliced into a Charlie Chaplin movie.

In the main obviously, he has lost touch with the oldest truth of coaching success: you are nothing without your players. You can lecture them, you can throw a thousand blackboard lessons at them, but none of it is any good if they no long want to play for you.

That is the kernel of the job, and if Benitez had forgotten this at Anfield, if he had appeared ever more the self-parodying schoolmaster, there could hardly have been a better reality check than some brief analysis of the astonishing performance of the man he has attempted to succeed at San Siro.

Success

Whatever you think of Mourinho's emphasis as a football man, it was not hard to see the key to his success with Inter.

He lifted them beyond their previous levels of serial success in Serie A, he made them champions of Europe and stopped the wonder of the soccer age, Barcelona, in full flight, because he had a ruthlessly specific game plan and, more importantly, his players loved him. Wesley Sneijder said he would kill for Mourinho. Marco Materazzi wept in the departing coach's arms.

For Benitez it was not a place or a time to produce some over-arching belief in your own powers, not with Liverpool in ruins back at Anfield -- not unless you believed all those loyalist placards declaring that every scintilla of blame could be diverted from you to the absentee American landlords.

Benitez's opening statement in the summer to an Inter following that had warmed only slowly to the all-conquering Mourinho, was that he wanted to improve the quality of the team's football. It needed to be more subtle, more sophisticated.

Now he delivers a mind-blowing ultimatum to Inter president Massimo Moratti. It is a three-point edict demanding 100pc support of the coach, the signing of three or more new players by a team who won everything before them seven months ago, or, failing that, a swift call to his agent to sort out another pay-off.

As if Moratti wasn't underwhelmed enough by the fact that his once all-conquering team trail Milan by 13 points in the Serie A table, he is now said to be rabidly disenchanted. Handing him an ultimatum, say the Italian football cognoscenti, suggests a certain detachment from reality. But then hasn't that been the Benitez problem for quite some time?

Irish Independent

James Lawton wrote this btw

[Bender]

LMAO! His immediate response to the question ...he's such a narky, defensive cunt

I know

[Rich]

Shifty, beady eyes.

[wavydavy]

Now 9-1 Hills, 10-1 PP. Coming in!

[Pedenj]

Inter's squad isn't the best in Europe, and the job was described by a lot at the end of the season as looking great from the outside, but that all was not great internally. Think someone close to the club described it as "Rotten".

Players like Eto'o were quoted as saying he loved life under Rafa, and it was down to his tactics he was scoring freely (same tactics that meant torres was so leathal??).

While he hasn't had it great, it's clear he was lied to, every respectable journo says at much. He was promised players that never came, with the club putting in silly bids for players such as mascherano. There bid was never going to be accepted, they knew that, but it was almost as if to show that they tried.

Rafa made mistakes in his last year with us, but he never looked clueless and stood around rubbing his face.

[tsb]

Rafa made mistakes in his last year with us, but he never looked clueless and stood around rubbing his face.

[Kenneth]

Now 9-1 Hills, 10-1 PP. Coming in!

It's like taking candy from a baby for them.

[Craig_H]

Idiot.

It's like taking candy from a baby for them.

Idiot.

[Tatterdemalion]

No surprise at all, given that he clearly engineered it himself.

You mean rafa? - cos that's what I think - so obviously engineered. Question is why - it could just be a cynical way of making a lot of money very quickly or a self admission that it isn't working out, but that doesn't seem very rafa-like. Wonder if he has a job in mind?