Rafa Watch

[McDermotX]

[Kenneth]

121 pages and i'm still yet to see a picture of Rafa's watch.

Page 2, first post

http://www.est1892.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=1690341&postcount=41

[Trippendicular]

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns...enitez?cc=3436

Arguably Liverpool's most successful manager of the last two decades owes more to Silicon Valley than Bill Shankly. Then again, he always did. Rafa Benitez is famously fond of facts, and a glimpse of his modus operandi shows the importance of technology to store the statistics. The Spaniard was an early enthusiast. "When I was coaching the youth teams of Real Madrid, I was using Commodore 64, Spectrum, all these things," he said. "I had Visual Basic, I was creating my own programmes and I had all the information there. I was doing technical tests for my players and, at the end of the season, they improved around 30%. We scored 114 goals and conceded 14. My strength is on the pitch but, with that computer, I could manage all the information."

He has moved with the times. Benitez, in the manner of many an aspiring entrepreneur, has devised an iPad application to advertise his skills. And yet while a technophobe like Harry Redknapp, who cannot send an email, is the favourite for the England job, the paradox is that this most modern of managers seems a man out of time. Benitez is finding ways of busying himself, of keeping a high profile, but the reality remains that he has been unemployed for 15 months since Internazionale sacked him.

There have been offers, some probably lucrative, including the chance of a short-term stint with Chelsea, but nothing that may be commensurate with his status as a Champions League and La Liga-winning manager. An unfulfilled figure wants a project, preferably an all-encompassing post, a chance to put plans in place and to run a club. As he displayed flow charts of the two managerial models - the continental, where the head coach is subservient to the sporting director, and the English, where the power of men such as Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger is greater - it is clear where his preference lies.

The strategist wants to be responsible for everything. "The manager has to have knowledge about business, the economy and the squad," Benitez said at SoccerEx in Manchester. "The economic crisis around the world will be really, really important." He is keen to stress his own financial credentials, highlighting Liverpool's turnover: £91.5 million in their final season under Gerard Houllier, £184.1 million in his last year in charge. "That means stability and progress," he added.

The numbers are a constant, providing explanation and justification. Training sessions last 60 to 90 minutes, 80% of them with the ball; 70% are pre-planned, 30% dictated by the opposition of the team's specific needs that week. A graphic illustrates the distance players cover in a game: 5,468m on average in the 1950s and 1960s, 11,523m for the Liverpool team of 2005-10. It necessitates rotation, he argues. Players are shown charts of their physical performance: if they are in the red zone, they need to take a rest.

"You need to know as much as you can about your players," the Spaniard said. To some, it is a quest for knowledge; to others, a thirst for control. He is part technocrat, part teacher. "I am a professor. The way I coach is teaching. They will learn and they will learn forever," Benitez explained. It can make him sound dogmatic, but he has always been a blend of the obdurate and the amiable, a man with few airs and graces but a professional perfectionist with up-to-the-minute methods. "Part of my idea is to try and improve everything," he said. "If you give a DVD to a player about movements, positive and negative, if he wants to watch it, after a year he will be a better player."

The demanding approach is epitomised by the phrase displayed behind Benitez on a projector. "A winning manager has to have the mentality that victory is normal, not exceptional. The manager is eternally dissatisfied."

It has led to suggestions that he is cold, the dispassionate analyst always eyeing room for improvement. Benitez is rarely deemed a man-manager. He disagrees. "[Fernando] Torres with belief, with confidence, is a top-class player," he said, having helped his countryman become officially one of the world's top three players. "Without that, he is missing something." The Spaniard's sidekick was another to benefit from Benitez's meddling. "When we came to Liverpool, [Steven] Gerrard plays in the middle and scores ten goals a season," he said. "When he plays on the right or behind the striker, he scores more than 20 goals."

Yet the captain's redeployment was controversial. So is much else Benitez has done or espoused: the rotation policy, the focus on net spend, the list of "facts" that became known as 'Rafa's Rant', the supposed attempt to take on Ferguson at mind games (interestingly, Benitez said: "When I was in Extremadura, bottom of the league, a small team, I was not going in to fight against any manager."). Mere mention of his name prompts many to rehash old arguments, for and against. He remains weighed down by the baggage of the past, perhaps a reason a man with futuristic techniques appears unfashionable.

Hence, perhaps, Benitez's PR offensive. The Wirral's most notable immigrant can appear inflexible, but he made an effort to adapt to life in England. "From the first day, I was saying, 'Give me English coaches because they will know the culture of the club and they will help me'," he recalled. Computer programmes serve their purpose, but there is always a need for the human touch. Persuading people he is the right man may be the hardest part for Benitez if he is to resume a coaching career that has included some extraordinary highs. There is no piece of software that can bring his exile to an end.

[little dave hedgehog]

he coached with a commodore 64.

bless.

[MrMichael]

I can't post a tumble weed gif from my iPad. But believe me, I've tried.

What's wrong with

[Fredo]

he coached with a commodore 64.

bless.

April hoax?

[Davex2IRL]

http://www.independent.ie/sport/socc...r-3067627.html

Rafa's ghost haunts Anfield succession of trial and error


By Dion Fanning

Sunday April 01 2012

Liverpool are in a tricky position when they argue against short-termism. Not because they sacked Roy Hodgson after six months. If anything, Hodgson's miserabilist reign was indulged for far too long.

When Liverpool sacked Rafael Benitez in the summer of 2010, they had finished second in the league a year before and reached the last eight in the Champions League.

The act of suicidal impatience when Benitez was fired makes the Roman Abramovich era at Chelsea look like working in placid Switzerland while Benitez tried to get things done under the Borgias. It certainly matches the dismissal of Carlo Ancelotti and, in terms of the damage done to the club, the consequences have been greater.

Liverpool overachieved under Benitez. His own highly developed sense of intrigue contributed to his downfall but key players within the club listened to opinion-formers whose opinions had been previously disregarded. They made a persuasive case that Benitez had reached the end of the line. He was a political being and Liverpool was feeding that obsession with politics.

For that reason, it was easy to make the case that he should go. There was no case at all for sacking Benitez and replacing him with Roy Hodgson, a sequence of events that has removed Liverpool from the front rank of football and should prevent anyone who put forward this two-point plan as a solution to Liverpool's problems from commenting on the club for some time.

If clubs do have a DNA, then Liverpool demonstrated theirs in their rejection of Hodgson. Like a body rejecting an unsuitable organ, Liverpool fans revolted against a man who would laugh on tv at the idea that the club could challenge for the title. Benitez is trying to recover and so are Liverpool. He appeared at the Soccerex conference in Manchester last week when he should really be managing a club in the Champions League.

This Bonfire of the Danglers is everything football does badly. Football does self-loathing best of all, especially if the opposite is self-regard and Soccerex is full of self-regard. Benitez was said by many observers to have given an unimpressive seminar. He would be better off sticking to what he does best: obsessively creating football teams that win against the odds. He is not a member of polite society. Like Roy Keane, he has no interest in small talk.

He has a bad image in the media but the solution is not to become what he is not and then be criticised for it anyway. He may as well be criticised for things that people don't understand.

Somewhere else on the Soccerex complex, Gerard Houllier was also speaking, delivering a talk which nobody could find fault with. Again, we see the point of these carnivals of bull****. If you want good seminar, hire Houllier, Andy Roxburgh or Hodgson. If you want to win the European Cup with Djimi Traore or his equivalent, hire Benitez.

Benitez needs to become a mythical figure, the JD Salinger of football, somebody who is never seen, certainly never seen sitting on the Soccer Am sofa alongside a member of Snow Patrol.

Events at Liverpool since he departed have improved his reputation more than any PR offensive.

Things have got so bad this season for Kenny Dalglish that it has led to an attempted upward revision of the Hodgson era. This would make sense if Liverpool fans were happy with League results, but they aren't as the sight of a minority turning on one of the greatest figures in the club's history demonstrates.

Liverpool may yet be able to point to two trophies and claim a successful season but the true consequence of this season has been the damage done to Dalglish's reputation, mainly by Dalglish himself.

For the greatest player the club had, and a man who has done more than most for the club and the city he loves, this has been a trying season. His handling of the Suarez case was a mess which may have wedded him closer to the hardcore but has also brought a weariness to many on the outside.

Liverpool's supporters insist they do not care what others think of their club, all that matters is their own view of Dalglish. Their hysterical reaction whenever anyone does offer a negative opinion suggests that they care quite a lot, like the man who says he is not the jealous type but sits twitching in the corner whenever his girlfriend leaves his side. This has compounded the errors of judgement made in the transfer market.

Certainly, Liverpool's purchases last summer were the worst since Gerard Houllier brought in Salif Diao, El-Hadji Diouf and Bruno Cheyrou to Liverpool, even if honourable mention must be made for the summer Benitez signed Alberto Aquilani.

Under Dalglish and Damien Comolli, Liverpool adopted a Buy British policy, based around the idea that players from the Premier League would settle quickly. If by settling, you mean revealing their inherent mediocrity, then it is Mission Accomplished. By every other measurement, the policy has failed.

The Director of Football Comolli is being set up as a scapegoat. At Tottenham Hotspur, he continued a Buy British policy which was in place when he arrived. Nobody can say for sure when this policy was abandoned but there may have been a subtle revision round about the time Tottenham entered the relegation zone. Some were happy with Liverpool going down this road.

"We've got a great togetherness about the squad, there's a lot of British players there now," Jamie Carragher said last October. "We went for a meal out before the derby and it was interesting that my wife could actually talk to some of the other wives without having to think of something in Spanish or French or something different. I think that will be a great thing for us this season."

It's heartening that the wives of the new signings have made such a positive impression at the dinner table, because the results on the pitch have been all that could be expected from a self-limiting approach to recruitment. Liverpool had six British players on the pitch when they collapsed at QPR. They started with the same number in last weekend's defeat to Wigan.

The new owners have allowed Dalglish to spend. This is to their credit, as is the indisputable fact that they are not Tom Hicks and George Gillett, but at crucial times they, and the managing director Ian Ayre, have been missing.

They are able to rectify mistakes of the past. Liverpool have been in turmoil for spells under the last two managers. One was a divisive figure, who inspired loyalty in a strange band of acolytes but was undermined by defects in his character and was accused of being paranoid. The other won the European Cup.

Dalglish brought unity which, given all that had gone before, was a spectacular achievement. Now he needs to rectify his own mistakes. He is not entitled to time, no manager is, but patience may be the best way of making up for all that went before.

[email protected]

- Dion Fanning

[Buzzo]

Spot on article that. Highlights the flaws without sticking in the knife. Brutally honest appraisal of where the club is right now.

Idiotic comments from Jamie Carragher though... As the article states, who ****ing cares how his wife feels when they go out to dinner. It's a small minded mentality, and one that Carra would be advised to keep to himself.

[colin85]

Carra needs to keep his mouth shut. I don't think he will make a good manager one day, used to think he would.

[The_weatherman]

Spot on article that. Highlights the flaws without sticking in the knife. Brutally honest appraisal of where the club is right now.

Idiotic comments from Jamie Carragher though... As the article states, who ****ing cares how his wife feels when they go out to dinner. It's a small minded mentality, and one that Carra would be advised to keep to himself.

Wonder what someone like Reina or Kuyt feels about a comment like that. Carra is a bit too much like Murphy for my liking.

[Alex]

What's wrong with

Didn't see it

[Vermilion]

These journo's talk utter crap, imo there is far to much written on the why's and wherefores of football, the rights and wrongs, the reasons for this or that.

At the end of the day it's just an opinion they need to have to make cash, means **** all in the grand scheme of things and 99.9% of the stuff they write is ****e and not worth reading.

The curse of sport imo.

[Rigadon]

http://www.independent.ie/sport/socc...r-3067627.html

Rafa's ghost haunts Anfield succession of trial and error


By Dion Fanning

Sunday April 01 2012

......

Somewhere else on the Soccerex complex, Gerard Houllier was also speaking, delivering a talk which nobody could find fault with. Again, we see the point of these carnivals of bull****. If you want good seminar, hire Houllier, Andy Roxburgh or Hodgson. If you want to win the European Cup with Djimi Traore or his equivalent, hire Benitez.

.......

[email protected]

- Dion Fanning

[badpiggy]

I've been waiting for Dion Fanning to write something about our current predicament. Hard to disagree with anything he's written there but it's very hard not to feel an awful sense of disappointment at Carra's comments. Has he forgotten the players and manager he won the ****in European Cup with??? So it's better for LFC that his wife can listen to and understand whatever Andy ****in Carroll's girlfriend is talking about? What bollox.

[Craig_H]

Carragher's coming across more and more like some kind of xenophobe these days.