http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec....6783669
RAFA BENITEZ the authorised biography by Paco Lloret:
If, as Rafael Benitez suggested, managers only obsess about those they are afraid of, you can build a fairly good map of the tensions inside Premiership football.
From the moment Arsene Wenger arrived at Highbury, Sir Alex Ferguson could seldom help himself when the subject of Arsenal cropped up. Wenger, who before Roman Abramovich's arrival from the oil-filled wastes of Siberia, must have thought he would dominate the Premiership, is more uneasy about Jose Mourinho than anyone else. And 'The Special One' is talking rather a lot about Liverpool.
Ferguson fears Wenger, Wenger fears Mourinho and Mourinho fears Benitez.
Too simple, too trite but not altogether untrue.
After Wednesday's Champions League encounter at Anfield, it was possible to believe that contests between Chelsea and Liverpool might shape the future of the Premiership. If football matches are won in the centre of the pitch, then a midfield of Xabi Alonso, Steven Gerrard and Luis Garcia looks a surer, younger and more settled foundation than the players available to Manchester United or Arsenal.
In style, the contrast between Benitez and Mourinho could not be starker. One wears his flamboyance on his sleeve, the other, Benitez, could hardly bring himself to take the cheers when Valencia paraded their first title in 31 years through the streets of the city to the Basilica of the Virgin.
But others have always had confidence in him. Benitez's biographer, Paco Lloret, recalls picking up the telephone to hear a friend say: "Some day this guy will become manager of Valencia and make us champions." Benitez was then an entirely obscure figure. His wife, Montse, told her husband he would manage European champions by the time he was 45. He was born in 1960.
His birthplace was Madrid, and the danger for Liverpool is that Benitez will be tempted back to the Bernabeu, the ground where his dreams of playing were crushed. Since he was the man who last year ground down a seemingly impenetrable lead built up by a Madrid side managed by Carlos Queiroz, they might want him back.
It is a scenario Lloret, who has known Benitez since he was a young, struggling manager with Extremadura, can never see happening. The galactico culture of the Bernabeu, where marketing is placed at the heart of president Florentino Perez's strategy, is something he could not stomach.
"Rafa can never go to Madrid. He told me that he cannot accept players whom he cannot teach to do the right thing in training," said Lloret, who has written the first biography of Liverpool's quietly extraordinary manager. "It would be hard to work with Raul, Ronaldo or Zidane. He could never accept the kind of interference from the president that they have there.
"I remember talking to Rafa in 2004, when Valencia were fighting Madrid for the title. I said that I felt sure we were going to win because I had friends in Madrid and I knew how they were training. There was no real work; players were training for 45 minutes. I knew how hard they were working in Valencia and how they would seek to improve every week. He said to me, 'Madrid have a bigger car than us but our car has petrol'.
"For the chairman of Real Madrid the goal is to sell shirts in Australia and China and to market the club all over the world. I know Rafa; he's only happy when all the players are working together for a single purpose. He couldn't train with Ronaldo when Ronaldo is going off to some sponsor's session."
Michael Owen told friends before leaving Liverpool for Madrid that Benitez was not a man who would put his arm round a player in need of reassurance, and Lloret agreed. "It's true, perhaps. Sometimes he would like to be a warmer man, but on the other hand he's so professional - he wants 100 per cent from every player."
Yesterday Alonso, who represents Benitez's best and most expensive piece of business since coming to Anfield, described his dressing-room talks. "Rafa's analysis of the opposition teams is so thorough - he knows every strength and every weakness - and I like the way he takes care of every small bit of detail."
Sometimes the detail can be making sure that two players who are to perform similar tasks on the pitch share a hotel room before an away game. And mostly, this is admirable. It explains why Mourinho's tactics of enveloping a defence with Damien Duff and Arjen Robben on the wings, while Frank Lampard pushes through to support the striker, has generally failed to unsettle Liverpool. Not for nothing was his Valencia side called 'The Crushing Machine'.
However, the obsessing over detail also calls to mind the dossiers of Don Revie that turned a great Leeds manager into a paranoid, over-cautious figure, especially with England. During his long, debilitating final illness Revie confessed to his great lieutenant, Johnny Giles, that he wished he had allowed Leeds to express themselves. This season Liverpool have managed a single goal in four matches at Anfield and that against Sunderland.
"Rafa knew he was taking a big risk going to Liverpool and that he would need time," said Lloret. "In Spain he was number one. He didn't know the English game and he was worried by his knowledge of the language. But he wanted to show everybody he could be successful in a country where no Spanish coach has succeeded."
Interestingly, while Benitez's European triumph with Liverpool in Istanbul was the lead item on Spanish television news, Mourinho boasts an altogether lower profile. "Nobody in Spain can believe he has become such a good coach," Lloret said.
Rafa Benitez by Paco Lloret is published by Dewi Lewis Media at £12.99
=============================================
=============================================
here are some other 'cut and paste' thoughts on the gaffer. in particular the champions league game on wednesday, and the league game on sunday (oct 02 2005)
It is not an accusation that could ever have been levelled at a man who wears his self-confidence like a suit of armour, but last night Jose Mourinho was informed by Rafael Benitez that he was afraid of Liverpool.
For a club who lie 14 points behind the Chelsea side he manages and who seem no threat to his title, Mourinho has wasted an awful lot of words on Anfield. And to the Liverpool manager that signifies a man who is uneasy about the threat his club pose.
"I am sure they do not like playing Liverpool," Benitez said yesterday. "They keep talking and talking about us. I think they are worried; I think they are afraid. I can't stop him talking about us but if they keep doing it, it means we are doing the right thing." Benitez remarked that not only did Liverpool play better against Chelsea on Wednesday night than they had in the European Cup semi-final, they were obviously the better team.
When he arrived on Merseyside on Tuesday, Mourinho dismissed Liverpool's credentials as champions of Europe, saying with some justice that they were not the continent's best team. After the goalless draw in the Champions League, he dismissed their tactics as nothing more than launching long balls towards the tall figure of Peter Crouch.
For Jamie Carragher this was the sound of pots casting insults at kettles. "We watched videos of Chelsea and when we saw their game against Bayern Munich, I couldn't remember seeing so many long balls since I started watching football in the 1980s.
"No one could accuse us of being too direct. Our midfielders got the better of them. When you look at the quality they've got in Lampard, Essien and Makelele, I thought Xabi [Alonso], Didi [Hamann] and Steven [Gerrard] had the upper hand."
Crouch is not yet in the class of Niall Quinn as a header of a long ball but if there was an accusation that could be levelled at Liverpool on Wednesday it was that in pushing Djibril Cisse to the right, Benitez did not give his big striker sufficient support.
With Wayne Rooney suspended for next Saturday's World Cup qualifier with Austria at Old Trafford, Carragher imagined that Sven-Goran Eriksson, who was at Anfield, would use Crouch as a foil for Michael Owen, who stands a full 11 inches shorter.
"Peter's shown what ability he has got on the deck," Carragher said. "I thought he was outstanding again. He has got to be favourite to wear that No 9 shirt for England against Austria."
Crouch was pleased by his display. "I always felt sure I could play at this level and, against Betis and Chelsea, I felt more than comfortable," he said. "John Terry is a great defender and not many cause him problems but I'd like to think that I did. I can take heart from that and do the same on Sunday and help us beat Chelsea because we really believe we can do that."
The stakes will be considerably higher. With Liverpool already badly adrift of Chelsea, albeit with two matches in hand, they could afford to lose on Wednesday in a way they simply cannot on Sunday. Mourinho, with a flick of his wrist, said that a Liverpool defeat would knock them out of the title race completely.
Benitez is nothing if not a realist. "I know we were the better team and we had a different side to the last time we played them; but it will be difficult to be better than them for nine months. All you can say is that for one game we did well."
Liverpool have not managed a goal in either of their Premiership encounters but Benitez, as always, appeared calm in the face of adversity. "I am not under pressure because I work for a fantastic board with a fantastic chairman and a have a good squad. We also have wonderful supporters."
Reminded of Mourinho's assertion that since the world was against Chelsea, the whole country would be supporting Liverpool on Sunday, Benitez replied laconically. "We have our supporters with us. I don't need anybody else."
============================================
============================================
i cant wait to read this book, as im sure it will offer much more insight into how the club 'works'...than other titles.
if any of you HAVE read it can you post some thoughts..
thankyou.
by