Rafa Watch

[Shaggy]

Scouser isn't he, Adkins? Or at least from over the water.

[JudgeRed]

From Talksport, so its probably bollocks wrapped in bull**** but anyways:

Former Liverpool boss Rafa Benitez could be set for a shock return to management with AC Milan, according to reports in Italy.

After losing their Serie A crown to Juventus in May, Milan have endured a turbulent start to this season - they've lost two of their three opening games in Serie A and began their Champions League campaign with a disappointing draw at home to Anderlecht on Tuesday night.

Unsurprisingly, speculation over the future of manager Massimiliano Allegri is already starting to intensify, and Milan vice-president Adriano Galliani is thought to be keen on Benitez, who has been out of work since leaving Milan's rivals Inter in December 2010.

Despite Benitez's mixed spell at Inter - he landed two trophies, but won just six of his 15 league games in charge - Galliani was impressed by the Spaniard's work at Liverpool, where he won the Champions League, the FA Cup and guided the Merseyside club to their strongest title challenge in nearly 20 years.

Allegri's job is believed to be safe for now, but should results worsen over the next two weeks, Galliani could look to bring Benitez back to Italy.

Read more at http://www.talksport.co.uk/sports-ne...zLIVFdchxHX.99

[JudgeRed]

If there is a grain of truth in this and the job goes his way, I hope he takes it. I think he would do well there.

[Chris]

Think thats one to avoid. The 11 they fielded the other day was horrific. Lost their best players, no cash, miles behind Juve as a squad. Inter and Napoli have better too in my opinion. **** that.

[Reece]

Yeah. He needs to get a nice job in Spain.

[Lee]

Yeah. He needs to get a nice job in Spain.

Milan would be a terrible move for him.

[Shaggy]

Yep. He hated being in Italy anyway didn't he. **** that.

[Tee]

Obviously him coming back to us is highly unlikely for the forseeable future, so I would love to see him back at Valencia. Would be a great move and a challenge he would enjoy.

Disclaimer - I have no idea how Valencia are doing right now!

[Shanks]

Decent write up from Tony Evans

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/...3be70d8db3f1c9


A day talking trophies, tactics and Xabi Alonso with Rafa

They are all mad, managers.

On the surface, they are normal, rational human beings but once the talk turns to football, the insanity kicks in.

They are obsessed. They can be irrational.

An idle joke can set them off on a tactical lecture, turning a social gathering into a masterclass on zonal marking or the psychology of team spirit.

They can be breathtakingly one-eyed. It is fascinating to see them up close.

I was reminded of this after spending a day with Rafa Benitez on Tuesday.

Benitez was promoting his book Champions League Dreams, written with the help of Rory Smith, and took part in a question and answer session in front of 900 people (click here to watch the video).

The crowd loved him but it felt wrong.

Europe’s most prestigious club tournament kicked off that night and a man who has led teams to two finals in the past seven years, the hero of Istanbul, was sitting on a stage in London.

Everyone has an opinion on Benitez and few take the middle ground.

During the troubled years at Liverpool, public perceptions were moulded by his enemies.

You could see why rival managers would seek to undermine him.

It is less easy to comprehend why so much of the negative criticism came from within Anfield.

Benitez’s reputation is collateral damage in the war that raged within the club during the Gillett and Hicks years.

He arrived on Merseyside from Valencia with two La Ligas and a Uefa Cup on his CV.

In his first year in English football, he lifted the European Cup, the second the FA Cup.

The third season brought another trip to the Champions League final but the most significant event of that campaign occurred in the February of that season: Gillett and Hicks bought the club and from that point there could not be a happy ending.

It’s easy to underestimate the scale of the challenge Benitez faced.

With apologies to Graham Taylor, this really was the impossible job.

It ended in rancour and bitterness, with many of the supporters glad to see the back of him.

Two years on, his term at Anfield takes a rosier glow by the week.

Like someone on the rebound, he bounced into the Inter Milan job too quickly.

Like all rebound relationships, it was doomed to failure.

Not only was he following a Champions League-winning Jose Mourinho, he inherited an ageing squad that was not strengthened in the afterglow of the previous season.

Since then, Benitez has sat at home on the Wirral, turning down implausible jobs, playing footsie with a number of potential suitors but never quite finding the role that he wants and needs.

He spoke to Aston Villa and the fans’ message boards were in uproar.

After all, who would want a manager with a record like his? Chelsea wanted him to take a humiliating caretaker role.

Even though they went on to win the Champions League, Benitez believes he made the right decision in rejecting their overtures. Men with his list of honours should not be seen as 16-week stopgaps.

With every day he remains out of work, his achievements seem to fade from the collective memory.

What remains is a vague, lingering misapprehension. “You know Benitez,” a top-flight executive said to me. “He’s a bad man, right?”

Most emphatically wrong. That could not be farther from the truth. He is warm, funny, enthusiastic and fantastic company.
But in some boardrooms the belief that he is a troublemaker remains.

There are those who see things differently, though.
A young British coach learning his trade aboard said he would love to work with Benitez. “You want to learn from the best,” he said. “They don’t come better than Rafa. He’s a genius.”

The plus side of being on the sidelines for two years is that Benitez is refreshed and ready to throw himself into a job with gusto.

At the end of his spell at Liverpool, he was exhausted by the infighting and the edge had gone off his infectious enthusiasm.

The next club that gets him will get the Rafa of 2004 and not the troubled, weary manager of 2010.

And yes, he’s mad, like them all.

There are days when there are no hellos or greetings, just an immediate launch into a tactical discussion backed up by an overheated iPad trying to process more statistics than is good for it.

And in the middle of it all, he will throw you a gem of knowledge that enlightens you about the game and the way it is played.

And just like Ferguson, Mourinho and the rest, he’s stubborn.

Liverpool may have got beaten by AC Milan in the 2007 Champions League final, but Benitez will go to his grave shouting that he got the tactics right.

The Xabi Alonso situation divides opinion on Merseyside but to Benitez it is black and white and, of course, he was right.

Argue as much as you like, he is not moving from these set positions. With managers, there’ll always be subjects that defy discussion and – sometimes - even logic.

But what’s really mad is that a manager like Benitez can be out of work for so long when underachievers get plum jobs.

Long careers have been built on affable images and empty trophy cabinets. The hard currency of success – trophies – seems to have been forgotten along the way.

Managers may be prone to craziness but when they bring home the prizes it justifies the eccentricity.

But when a man like Benitez is left sitting at home you have to question football’s sanity.

[Shaggy]

Well ****in said

[RedReet]

[Catrin]

There's a bit in Brian Reade's book about Purslow running after Rafa after he had been told about his sacking and saying something like "I would be so upset if you thought that any of this was personal." Well, it certainly wasn't about football, or if it was then we really did have a monumental bunch of ****wits running our club at the time.

[Phoenix07]

Tony Evans obviously forgetting to include he did a 20 minute podcast for The Anfield Wrap podcast with Rafa in his hotel room. What he's said is right, but there's no balance as usual from Evans. Terrible writer and really just comes across as someone who doesn't present his argument constructively. Wish Rory Smith would've produced an article instead.

[Catrin]

Tony Evans obviously forgetting to include he did a 20 minute podcast for The Anfield Wrap podcast with Rafa in his hotel room. What he's said is right, but there's no balance as usual from Evans. Terrible writer and really just comes across as someone who doesn't present his argument constructively. Wish Rory Smith would've produced an article instead.

If I understand correctly the point that you are making (that Evans is pro-Rafa and that the article is biased) then almost every article written about Rafa over the last 3-5 years has also been biased but not in his favour. Some of the ****e that supposedly respected writers like James Lawton were coming out with at the time of Rafa's sacking where absolute hatchet-jobs.

[JudgeRed]

Yep. He hated being in Italy anyway didn't he. **** that.

I get what you re saying but its still one of the most prestigious jobs in world football, and if i remember correctly we werent exactly pulling up trees when he joined us either. Hes got to get back into management at somepoint, because as much as we d like it to happen the nice/top clubs in spain arent looking for a new manager- as far as I'm aware