Source: Telegraph
Real Madrid flame still burns for Rafa Benitez
With Rafael Nadal, the emblem of Spain's re-emergence as a sporting superpower, in the audience to inspect his cherished Galacticos, it seemed an apt gesture on the Liverpool manager's part. It was equally striking how Fernando Torres, hero of the hour for Spain in last year's European Championship final, drew almost as many cheers as Raul, the totem of Real.[LNB]Although Benitez's team, with Torres leading the line and Xabi Alonso acting as the impenetrable defensive screen, might have seemed like a faithful likeness of that triumphant Spain side, the Liverpool manager upholds a very different view from the national team on what 'Spanishness' signifies in the game. Under his command it means discipline and obduracy, as exemplified by the unstinting work of Fabio Aurelio and Alvaro Arbeloa as wing-backs in carving out this defiant victory; it certainly does not translate to a licence to attack at will. Curiously this match unravelled into precisely the type of attritional, aesthetically-arid affair that has become his stock in trade, that is until Yossi Benayoun's header offered the decisive intervention.[LNB]So set against contemporary judgments, which hold Spain to be the exponents of everything that is elegant and entertaining about football, Benitez is in many ways a decidedly un-Spanish manager. But he attracts no less fascination in his homeland for it. As he emerged from the tunnel the photographers knew instinctively which way to turn their lenses, and it was not towards opposite number Juande Ramos.[LNB]When exactly did Benitez's notion of Spanishness become outmoded? Not when he lifted two titles in three years with Valencia, nor when he built a Champions League-winning side at Liverpool four years ago around such unheralded Spanish talent as Luis Garcia. His accomplishments have simply not looked so significant of late amid the appetite for attacking artistry stoked throughout Spain by glory at the Euros. But all it needed last night was for him to take one step inside the Bernabeu, into the fold of the club that so esteemed him as their youth coach, for his countrymen to remember exactly who he was.[LNB]It is not solely because of Benitez's tortuous contract talks at Anfield that the perennial stories linking him to the head coach's position here have resurfaced. It is because Real could, as their disjointed play against Liverpool suggested, do with an injection of the qualities Benitez is known to bring. Truth be told, he might have missed the moment, with Ramos – allegedly a 'caretaker', in light of his six-month contract – advertising himself as a shoo-in to inherit the job permanently after winning nine of his first 10 games in La Liga. [LNB]But victories alone might not be enough to guarantee Ramos' future, not unless he can engineer the edge that would enable Real to challenge Barcelona, whom they have distantly trailed this season, and to have a tilt at a 10th European Cup, in spite of last night's setback.[LNB]This is where Benitez comes in. Ramos may have turned Sevilla around to win two Uefa Cups, but he never acquired the legend that his compatriot did at Valencia when he made them double domestic champions. Benitez knows, whether it is at the Mestalla, or at the Ataturk in Istanbul when three goals down, what it is like to surmount mightily improbable odds. Benitez is recalled in Spain as the man who can make the crucial difference.[LNB]In yesterday's swirl of crazy conjecture Benitez would not let any such thought cross his mind, not publicly. He was indivisibly attached to Liverpool, and Liverpool to him, he said. This is in much the same way Real claim to be committed to Ramos, even if the sense endures that they have not quite closed the door on Benitez, not yet. [LNB]
