Rafa Watch

[Lecter]

So we've had milk and sugar talk from Rafa

Hope he doesnt ask Hodgson for a cup

[spanky]

He's getting an absolute hammering from the press and most of the so called pundits and he's not in england to answer back. I wish the Kop at the weekend chanted his name constantly like craig suggested, gets the message to the jackals.

[Lecter]

again nicked off RAWK

It tells everything that generally (myself included) people support Rafa over our current manager.

I think Rafa's comments were justified. Roy has tried to blame the poor start on him by saying we were terribly overstaffed, he has complained about lacking players up front, he's talked about expensive flops and he's brought in Kenny to build himself up. And that's without bringing up his own transfers and all the crap he's talked in press conferences.

Sadly, Roy has only himself to blame. He's done all the talking. Last time I checked, Rafa talked about what Inter had done well under Mourinho and what he wanted to change. Respect and focus on what he wanted to do himself. When he came to LFC, he talked about how he wanted the team to defend higher up the pitch. Let be he mentioned something about a table with three legs in what must have been a dig at the lack of balance in the squad. But he had an idea of what he wanted to do and didn't talk about Houllier all the time.

I hope Roy doesn't take this further. Wish he just said "I prefer to talk about the next game, not what other managers think about me" and killed this war of words. He'll only dig himself a deeper hole if he takes the fight further and it's not good for anyone.

[Arn]

My money is on you or Arn.

I will defend Rafa through wind and rain. That is just the way it is but I'm not him

As I said. Rafa is one of us. Rafa want us to succeed as much as all of us.

We and Rafa just love the club.

[Lecter]

Oliver Kay
November 1 2010 12:01AM
A familiar perch on the touchline at White Hart Lane awaits Rafael Benítez tomorrow evening. It was there, on a baking-hot August day in 2004, that the Inter Milan coach began his tenure in the Barclays Premier League, immediately attracting quizzical looks with his peripatetic approach, furrowed brow, paunch and notepad.
Benítez was viewed as an oddity then and, as he returns to English soil against Tottenham Hotspur tomorrow, he might be forgiven for thinking that little has changed.
There is little by way of measured debate where Benítez is concerned. Liverpool supporters, in the main, tend to view him as the best thing to happen to their club in the past decade. Farther afield, at least until you get to mainland Europe, he tends to be regarded as a frivolous eccentric who fluked a Champions League triumph and then lost his mind, overseeing a dramatic lurch into mediocrity while blaming everything on the American owners who had given him untold riches to splurge on a procession of wasters.
The truth, as ever, lies somewhere between the two extreme views, but if it is impossible to sit on the fence where this most divisive figure is concerned, count me as a Rafaelite. There was plenty to criticise during his six years at Anfield — and, from a personal perspective, the criticisms were less to do with zonal marking, squad rotation and his transfer record than his divisive behaviour, a scattergun approach to recruiting young players and a lack of interest in intangibles, such as team spirit — but there was far more to commend.
With hindsight, Benítez stayed on a season too long at Anfield — for his and the club’s good — but would anyone have dared to suggest in May last year that he should be sacked after guiding Liverpool to second place in the Premier League with 86 points? In fact, yes, some suggested so, but they tended to be the ones who had been saying so for years and were unwilling or unable to believe that a series of strong runs in the Champions League and top-four finishes were an acceptable return for a squad that, on paper, did not appear to be in the same class as Manchester United, Chelsea or, technically at least, Arsenal.
And whose fault was that? Of course Benítez had the funds, over the course of six years, to find a better left winger than Albert Riera and should have gone into his final season in charge with a suitable replacement for the sorely missed Xabi Alonso and more experienced back-up for Fernando Torres. And that is the point at which his wheeling and dealing in the transfer market — and his inability to arrest what was by now a severe psychological slump — became a problem.
Roy Hodgson inherited a difficult situation at Liverpool, not least in terms of the disaffection of many of his leading players, but if it was myopic and misguided for some observers to blame all of last season’s ills on Benítez, it has been even more so to characterise the troubles in this campaign as an inevitable consequence of the Spaniard’s legacy.
Somehow, though, that suits the narrative when it comes to Benítez: the narrative that he is merely reaping the fruits of José Mourinho’s labour at Inter, as he did with Gérard Houllier’s team in Liverpool in his first season. And, with that narrative in mind, Liverpool’s struggles under Hodgson are used as another stick with which to beat the Spaniard (as, laughably, is the fact that Valencia, La Liga champions and Uefa Cup winners in his final season, collapsed like a pack of cards in the aftermath of his departure).
Benítez once claimed that he would have to do a “perfect” job to turn Liverpool into champions. And it is clear now that he fell short of that standard. But despite some obvious flaws, there are not too many better coaches in world football, hence his latest appointment.
Woe betide Benítez, though, if Inter concede a goal from a set-piece tomorrow, in which case it will all be down to his weird penchant for something called zonal marking. Woe betide him if, with his team already well placed to reach the Champions League knockout stages, he rests a well-known player or two and his team fail to pick up maximum points. And pity his critics — perhaps not least Hodgson — if Inter’s performance does anything to support the alternative view that one of Europe’s most successful coaches might actually know what he is doing

[Shaggy]

Oliver Kay
November 1 2010 12:01AM
A familiar perch on the touchline at White Hart Lane awaits Rafael Benítez tomorrow evening. It was there, on a baking-hot August day in 2004, that the Inter Milan coach began his tenure in the Barclays Premier League, immediately attracting quizzical looks with his peripatetic approach, furrowed brow, paunch and notepad.
Benítez was viewed as an oddity then and, as he returns to English soil against Tottenham Hotspur tomorrow, he might be forgiven for thinking that little has changed.
There is little by way of measured debate where Benítez is concerned. Liverpool supporters, in the main, tend to view him as the best thing to happen to their club in the past decade. Farther afield, at least until you get to mainland Europe, he tends to be regarded as a frivolous eccentric who fluked a Champions League triumph and then lost his mind, overseeing a dramatic lurch into mediocrity while blaming everything on the American owners who had given him untold riches to splurge on a procession of wasters.
The truth, as ever, lies somewhere between the two extreme views, but if it is impossible to sit on the fence where this most divisive figure is concerned, count me as a Rafaelite. There was plenty to criticise during his six years at Anfield — and, from a personal perspective, the criticisms were less to do with zonal marking, squad rotation and his transfer record than his divisive behaviour, a scattergun approach to recruiting young players and a lack of interest in intangibles, such as team spirit — but there was far more to commend.
With hindsight, Benítez stayed on a season too long at Anfield — for his and the club’s good — but would anyone have dared to suggest in May last year that he should be sacked after guiding Liverpool to second place in the Premier League with 86 points? In fact, yes, some suggested so, but they tended to be the ones who had been saying so for years and were unwilling or unable to believe that a series of strong runs in the Champions League and top-four finishes were an acceptable return for a squad that, on paper, did not appear to be in the same class as Manchester United, Chelsea or, technically at least, Arsenal.
And whose fault was that? Of course Benítez had the funds, over the course of six years, to find a better left winger than Albert Riera and should have gone into his final season in charge with a suitable replacement for the sorely missed Xabi Alonso and more experienced back-up for Fernando Torres. And that is the point at which his wheeling and dealing in the transfer market — and his inability to arrest what was by now a severe psychological slump — became a problem.
Roy Hodgson inherited a difficult situation at Liverpool, not least in terms of the disaffection of many of his leading players, but if it was myopic and misguided for some observers to blame all of last season’s ills on Benítez, it has been even more so to characterise the troubles in this campaign as an inevitable consequence of the Spaniard’s legacy.
Somehow, though, that suits the narrative when it comes to Benítez: the narrative that he is merely reaping the fruits of José Mourinho’s labour at Inter, as he did with Gérard Houllier’s team in Liverpool in his first season. And, with that narrative in mind, Liverpool’s struggles under Hodgson are used as another stick with which to beat the Spaniard (as, laughably, is the fact that Valencia, La Liga champions and Uefa Cup winners in his final season, collapsed like a pack of cards in the aftermath of his departure).
Benítez once claimed that he would have to do a “perfect” job to turn Liverpool into champions. And it is clear now that he fell short of that standard. But despite some obvious flaws, there are not too many better coaches in world football, hence his latest appointment.
Woe betide Benítez, though, if Inter concede a goal from a set-piece tomorrow, in which case it will all be down to his weird penchant for something called zonal marking. Woe betide him if, with his team already well placed to reach the Champions League knockout stages, he rests a well-known player or two and his team fail to pick up maximum points. And pity his critics — perhaps not least Hodgson — if Inter’s performance does anything to support the alternative view that one of Europe’s most successful coaches might actually know what he is doing

[sitoca]

I miss Rafa and his quotes are legendary. Sitting here intently waiting for his next words of wisdom......

[Lecter]

He's getting an absolute hammering from the press and most of the so called pundits and he's not in england to answer back. I wish the Kop at the weekend chanted his name constantly like craig suggested, gets the message to the jackals.

Reaction here doesnt seem too bad

Rafael Benítez tells Roy Hodgson to stop whining over Liverpool legacy

• 'Each press conference is worse than the last'
• Spaniard irked by claim he had ostracised Kenny Dalglish

* David Hytner
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 November 2010 21.43 GMT
* Article history

Rafael Benitez Inter's Rafael Benítez, has told the Liverpool manager, Roy Hodgson, to stop criticising the Spaniard's record at Anfield. Photograph: Andrew Couldridge/Action Images

Rafael Benítez has launched a withering attack on Roy Hodgson, telling him to stop complaining about what he inherited from him at Liverpool and suggesting Hodgson does not fully understand the intricacies of life at Anfield.

Hodgson, who has suffered a difficult start to his tenure and the job of succeeding the popular Benítez, has aimed a series of recent barbs in the Spaniard's direction bemoaning the size of the rebuilding job that faced him, claiming the squad lacks quality in depth and features other "people's left-overs". He also tried to claim that he has got Kenny Dalglish truly back on board at the club, whereas the legendary former player and manager was marginalised under Benítez. This last claim has particularly irked his predecessor.

Benítez, whose Internazionale side face Tottenham Hotspur tomorrow night, hit back that some men, in other words Hodgson, "cannot see a priest on a mountain of sugar", whereas most people could see the black-clad figure against the white backdrop.

"I feel that Mr Hodgson, he doesn't understand," Benítez said. "Every single press conference is worse than the last one. He's talking about things he doesn't know. He doesn't understand, maybe he has been in the job for not so long.

"Instead of talking about the flips and the flops, he has to concentrate on his players and do his best. He has a good [big] job to do. He signed nine players [in the summer]. I left that squad and with £10m net spending, I left that squad with £300m value. Thirteen internationals.

"So instead of talking about flips and flops, he has to concentrate on the job, try to do his best and not talk about the level of his players. Let the new players come in and concentrate, try to do their best, because it will be the best for the club and the best for the fans.

"We gave the fans the pride. Again. We fight for the fans, we fight for the club and we fight for our players. Maybe he cannot understand this."

It was Benítez who brought back Dalglish to Liverpool, in a role that incorporated ambassadorial duties and youth academy work. "I brought back Kenny Dalglish to do a role in the club," Benítez said. "Christian Purslow [then] gave to him another role. So he [Hodgson] doesn't know but I will explain to him."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/nov/01/rafael-benitez-roy-hodgson-liverpool

[Neil Young]

Reaction here doesnt seem too bad

Yes, reaction is certainly less hostile than I'd expected.

Perhaps the media's pro-Hodger tide of guff is starting to turn.

[Rich]

Perhaps they are realising that the fabled LMA manager of the year award is a crock of ****!

[Shaggy]

http://spanishcow.wordpress.com/2010/10/22/milking-it/

Milking it

30th September was International Translation Day, which, like a slap in the face with a dictionary dipped in sour milk, was a sharp reminder of the need to update this blog a wee bit more often. A few days later, former Liverpool manager Rafa Benítez came along with his attempt to introduce an element of lactose-related español to a press conference diatribe. The Iberian Peninsula and dairy products being subjects close to any Spanish Cow’s heart, the opportunity could not be missed.

A bit of background for those that have no interest in football (that’s you, Mum): Rafael Benítez Maudes is a football manager who made his name with Tenerife and Valencia and took the reins at Liverpool in 2004. His time at Anfield was marked by massive highs and disillusioning lows, but will also be remembered for his 2-year spat with American owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks, who took over in 2006. It’s a convoluted tale, but in a nutshell, he didn’t like them, they didn’t like him, and Benítez was shown the door this summer. He promptly became coach of Inter Milan.

Fast-forward to this Tuesday. Rafa, in response to claims by the recently ousted Hicks that the blame for Liverpool’s poor form should be laid squarely at the door of the Reds’ former manager , made it clear to the media that he felt the opposite was true – ‘things were fine until the Yanks came along’ was pretty much his line of argument. To illustrate his point, he used a Spanish expression related to milk bottles.

Who’s right, who’s wrong and all the other tedious tit-for-tat twaddle isn’t really the point here. What’s interesting about this story – from a linguistic point of view – is the way it has been dealt with by the ever-insular English-speaking press. Almost to a man, the Spaniard’s monologue was described as ‘bizarre’ and ‘cryptic’. These words were so widespread that it makes you wonder if modern journalists have ever heard of a thesaurus. A quick glance at a basic online version reveals many useful candidates, such as ‘unorthodox’, ‘eccentric’ or ‘curious’ for the former , and ‘enigmatic’, ‘mystifying’ and ‘perplexing’ for the latter. But that’s by the by.

The point here is that it was neither cryptic nor bizarre. Benítez wasn’t havering or slavering; he was simply falling into the trap that people communicating in a language other than their own have done billions of times since man gained the ability to talk. He made the mistake of using an expression, or idiom, that is commonplace in Spanish, but doesn’t make an awful lot of sense in the language of Shakespeare. Idioms, like Scottish clubs in the Europa League, generally don’t travel well.

So what exactly were Benítez’s words? Attempting to explain that, for him, it was obvious who was to blame for Liverpool’s woes, he said, “We have a saying in Spanish, which is, ‘White liquid in a bottle has to be milk’. At the beginning, they changed the managing director…and they changed everything that we were doing in the past…So, if you want to ask again what was going on, it’s simple: they changed something and, at the end, they changed everything. So, white liquid in a bottle: milk. You will know who is to blame…White liquid in a bottle. If I see John the milkman in the Wirral, where I was living, with this bottle, I’d say, ‘It’s milk, sure’.”

(Amusingly, the Daily Telegraph caught up with the aforementioned John the milkman, who, with a nice line in gentle comedy, demonstrated that he may actually have chosen the wrong career for himself: “Rafa was a very good customer. He just got the three bottles of semi-skimmed. They didn’t have to be placed zonally on his step or anything.”)

The Spanish phrase RB was referring to is ‘Blanco y en botella, leche’. The closest equivalent in English is an expression sometimes heard in the United States, ‘If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck’. In Spanish it is delivered much like ‘Speak of the devil [and he doth appear]’ is in English, in that ‘leche’ is often not actually said or written; it is simply implied (let’s face it, no-one knows about the ‘he doth appear’ part these days, let alone says it). So it looks like milk, tastes like milk, it’s in a bottle: aye, it’s probably milk. In other words, if most people say the Americans businessmen were to blame, if it looks like they messed things up, well, actually, they probably did. In Rafa’s opinion.

In reports, articles and opinion pieces reminiscent of the reaction to Eric Cantona’s 1995 comment about seagulls and trawlers, the ‘bemused press corps’ (© every newspaper in the UK) then proceeded to describe poor old Benítez, who had even gone to the trouble of pointing out to the monolingual idiots present at his media conference that it was a non-English expression, as ‘mad’, ‘in need of a holiday’, ‘stressed out’ and ready for the ‘men in white coats’.

If Ron Atkinson, Bobby Robson, Chris Coleman, Terry Venables or Jock Wallace (British managers who all worked in Spain at one point) had literally translated ‘Don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched’ into Spanish at a press conference, you get the feeling that the reporters present wouldn’t have been calling the local asylum. They would more than likely have understood from the context, and sensibly realised that what the speaker was getting at was ‘don’t sell the bear’s skin before hunting it’ (‘no vendas la piel del oso antes de cazarlo’), the Spanish equivalent of counting your poultry. Our lazy old friends ‘bizarre’ and ‘cryptic’ would be nowhere to be seen.

As an aside, another version of the chickens proverb in Spain – ‘no hagas las cuentas de la lechera’ – involves a milkmaid who starts totting up all the cash she can make from all the ‘leche’ she’s extracted from her cow that morning, before spilling it all over road while on the way to the market. Far be it from me to suggest that the Spanish are ever-so-slightly obsessed with milk…

As a second aside, it’s interesting to note equivalents of the tongue-in-cheek expression ‘the son of the milkman’ in countries that don’t have home deliveries of the white stuff. In Spain, the baker is the bloke you have to be wary of, while the postman has been known to do the dirty deed in France. Spanish Cow is yet to discover a country where the candlestick maker is the cuckolding culprit, but we’ll keep looking.

Returning to Rafa’s ‘rant’, Benítez can surely be excused. He’s a bloody football manager, after all. And, as anyone who has ever had to sit through one of his post-match TV interviews will confirm, his English could never be described as fluent or natural. But as for the supposedly ‘educated’ media, erm, isn’t this one of the first things you learn in French/Spanish/German class, i.e. when you’re 10? That things that sound like they might be specific to the English language (or any other language) often can’t be translated literally? And don’t these journos deal in communication every day, for milk’s sake?

To paraphrase Señor Benítez, if representatives of the British media come across as lazy, stupid and ignorant, talk like they’re lazy, stupid and ignorant, and write lazy, stupid and ignorant things, then, well, they’re probably lazy, stupid and ignorant. White liquid in a bottle: milk.

[Fredo]

[Arn]

To paraphrase Señor Benítez, if representatives of the British media come across as lazy, stupid and ignorant, talk like they’re lazy, stupid and ignorant, and write lazy, stupid and ignorant things, then, well, they’re probably lazy, stupid and ignorant. White liquid in a bottle: milk.

Sums up something like 99% of the English sport media. Many of us could do a much better job than that 99% and that without being any clever at all. Just using common sense is enough to be better than that 99%.

99% of them are, yep, idiotic ****s.

[tsb]

In reports, articles and opinion pieces reminiscent of the reaction to Eric Cantona’s 1995 comment about seagulls and trawlers, the ‘bemused press corps’ (© every newspaper in the UK) then proceeded to describe poor old Benítez, who had even gone to the trouble of pointing out to the monolingual idiots present at his media conference that it was a non-English expression, as ‘mad’, ‘in need of a holiday’, ‘stressed out’ and ready for the ‘men in white coats’.

Cantona's comments were clearly a dig at the media who are attracted to potential stories like flies to the brown stuff. How they still dont seem to understand it I will never know!

[Zapater]

Not really on topic, but John Toshack directly translated some classic stock standard English phrases into spanish and the media there loved him for it.

"La Liga es el pan y la mantequilla y la nata es la Copa del Rey"

That has to be my favourite one. I'm not sure if those were exactly the words he used, but it was pretty close.

Although his Toshackisms, especially in Spanish he did have a lot of hilarious things to say even though they did make sense were just plain weird.

Here's a read of them, I'm an intermediate Spanish speaker and can read it easily, but the language is rather simple and should be able to go through a translater with ease.

"El cerdo volando sobre el Bernabéu" y otras frases célebres

Madrid, 22 ene (EFE).- John Benjamin Toshack, nuevo entrenador del Real Murcia, siempre se ha caracterizado por su peculiar interpretación del idioma del fútbol a la hora de hacer declaraciones, dejando frases para la historia como la del "cerdo volando sobre el Bernabéu", o la que dijo el pasado martes nada más llegar a Murcia: "No conozco nada de este equipo". La trayectoria de Toshack como entrenador avala una carrera de éxitos y fracasos, con la constante de ser el autor de frases que han quedado para la historia. "Hay más posibilidades de ver a un cerdo volando por encima del Bernabéu de que yo rectifique", fue una de las más célebres y la que a la postre le costó la destitución en su segunda etapa en el Real Madrid. La lista de frases para la posteridad del entrenador galés del Real Murcia es enorme. Estas son algunas de ellas: "Los lunes siempre pienso en cambiar a diez jugadores, los martes a siete u ocho, los jueves a cuatro, el viernes a dos, y el sábado ya pienso que tienen que jugar los mismos cabrones", dijo tras una derrota sonora de su equipo. Los medios de comunicación tampoco se libraron de su mordaz lenguaje: "Con las portadas de los periódicos sólo suelo estar de acuerdo con la fecha y el precio". "He hablado con los jugadores de toda esta mentira y gilipollez que está saliendo" "Jimmy Hasselbaink es como Joe Frazier y Anelka es como Mohamed Alí, flota como una mariposa y pica como una abeja", observó en una comparación entre ambos jugadores. "¿Chernobil?, creía que era un lateral izquierdo del Dimano de Kiev", dijo cuando el Madrid viajó a esa ciudad en un partido de Liga de Campeones. "No hay problemas con el agua, traemos Ardanza y Viña Tondonia para lavarnos los dientes", apostilló. Las relaciones con los jugadores ha sido el epicentro de muchas de sus manifestaciones. "Jugamos como pollos sin cabeza, cada uno por su cuenta". "En mi anterior etapa me criticaban por no lavar la ropa sucia dentro del vestuario, pero es que llevaba tres meses lavándola y no se secaba nunca". "Si quieres cocinas una tortilla con jamón y no tienes jamón, te tienes que conformar con una simple tortilla", comentó cuando en su plantilla creía no tener jugadores con calidad. El estadio de Vallecas tampoco se libró de su ironía. "Hace unos días estuve en Vallecas viendo un partido: Saca el portero, un jugador le da de cabeza y el posterior remate sale fuera del campo y se cuela por la ventana del baño de una casa, donde estaban todos aplaudiendo desde la terraza". Las críticas al juego de su equipo eran contestadas de manera directa. "Podemos evitar muy fácil que nos hagan goles, poniendo a ocho jugadores atrás, un pivote y un media punta". Otras de sus frases eran recurrentes y podían ser utilizadas en diversas ocasiones y circunstancias. "La decisión depende de... de cómo me levante la mañana del domingo". "Presión tiene la gente que está sin trabajo, los que están en el paro, no los jugadores". "Mi abuelo me ha dicho que es muy malo para la salud preocuparse". "La Liga es el pan y la mantequilla y la nata es la Copa del Rey". "Conseguir cuatro de los últimos quince puntos puede ser alarmante para el Real Madrid, es una buena palabra". "No hay nadie aquí que haya pedido un preparador físico y mientras esté aquí no va a haberlo". "No podemos ser unos genios el miércoles y unos idiotas el sábado". Hasta en la hora de las despedidas, Toshack ha demostrado su flema británica. Cuando salió del Real Madrid y vio que en el finiquito faltaba una cantidad en concepto de multa por llegar tarde a un entrenamiento, no dudó en afirmar: "Voy a enmarcar esta multa y la pondré en mi cuarto de baño". El martes pasado, ya en Murcia, John Benjamin Toshack demostró que sigue siendo el mismo de siempre al declarar: "No conozco nada de este equipo y no les he visto un solo partido". EFE rmb/edp