Rafa

It has finally happened. Before the start of the World Cup, Rafael Benitz, the manager of Liverpool Football Club has been shown the door. Former players like Ronnie Whelan and Graeme Souness, who actually played for a successful Liverpool side, have long called for his head and now they have it, on a plate, a costly silver one. Although where things go from here is another matter. The club is debt ridden and a replacement that will work is like that proverbial good man – hard to find. As Souness points out ‘who the club would like and who they’ll end up getting could be two very different things.’ Roy Hodgson? Can’t see him solving the range of problems confronting Liverpool FC.

Rafa will always be remembered fondly by Liverpool fans for having won the Champions League in 2005. 3-0 down to AC Milan at half time with seemingly only a remote chance of getting an Everton result – a respectable defeat - I left the Belfast City centre bar where I had watched the first half with another former republican prisoner. As the door swung closed behind us I ruminated that the Italian side could run riot and inflict the worst European defeat on Liverpool in its history. The best that could be hoped for was stopping them scoring any more. I was dejected and my friend didn’t care in the slightest.

Miracles don’t happen for the very simple reason that there is no miracle maker. But it is tempting to describe as miraculous – probably because what followed next was beyond belief – events in the second pub. It was as if we had flipped worlds and were now some place totally different. By the time we had taken our seats and made ready to shift our whiskies, it was already 3-2 and Xabi Alonso was stepping up to take a penalty which he failed to convert but managed to get right on the rebound.

At the risk of making an understatement, joyfully stunned is the best way to describe the new sensation lifting my being.

The bar was closing as the game concluded at 3-3 and there was nothing left but for the players to take their penalties. An awful way to end a game, particularly one as good as this, which should have been crowned with a victory in open play. We got a taxi and listened to its radio as all or nothing faced the spot kickers from either team. I managed to get into the house just in time to watch Liverpool secure a momentous victory which took away the cloud that had hung over the club from when it lost the 1988-89 title in the final minute of the last game at home to Arsenal. It was the season when 96 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at an FA Cup semi final in Sheffield. For them alone the team should have taken the title but failed lamentably.

That side under Kenny Dalglish, although a great player and manager, seemed not to have the bottle required to lift the double. For the second season in a row the League and Cup brace eluded them as they folded in the final game.

Istanbul cleaned the slate on that. However, if Rafa did the job on that splendid evening, when at half time he talked to the players, it was a one off which he never seemed capable of repeating. He benefited from the public belief that the success on the evening was down to his pep talk. It probably gave him a longer lease of life at the club than performances otherwise merited and allowed him to buy the type of players other clubs were only too glad to sell. The inspirational leadership of Steven Gerrard on the pitch, which was repeated on numerous occasions since, probably explains the side’s comeback better. But even he has gone to seed in a team that wears the Liverpool shirt as if it were a straitjacket.

There is some talk that Liverpool are considering at some point going back to the old boot room style of developing managers from within, even said to be grooming Jamie Carragher as a future coach. In the modern game that is not going to work, resembling as it does some crude form of autarky and protectionism. In 1967 a Celtic team could win the European Cup against Inter Milan with eleven players who lived within twenty miles of Glasgow. That won’t happen again. Soccer, whether we like it or not, has moved in tune with the hard world of business. Trying to recruit from within the club is a blinkered view that will overlook visionary talent from further afield. Too small a pool.

As for Rafa, there was the sense that he loved the club if not all those associated with it. It is unfortunate that he did not deliver the goods. His forays into the transfer market were dubious. He needed players, had limited funds but did he have to visit the fairgrounds of Europe in search of any old donkey no longer able to carry kids and in need of greener pastures? And yet what will prevent his portrait hogging the Hall of Shame will be that night in Istanbul, even if a lot of the glory he got was of the reflected type.

Tom Hicks and George Gillet, the current club owners, now they are names to forget, or if remembered, then only for ruining not reigning.

Posted in: Liverpool FC