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The Baron
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« Reply #194 on: October 24, 2009, 03:43:44 PM » |
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Tomkins meets Benitez:
If Anfield is the outer appearance of Liverpool FC – its face, its skin, its very public expressions – then Melwood is its heart, its guts, its nervous system.
When Rafa Benítez personally invites me to meet him for lunch at the legendary training ground, Liverpool have just seen their six-game winning streak come to an end in Italy, but things are still looking good. There is no agenda; just a long overdue chance to say hello, and say thank-you for taking the time to write for this site for four years.
And it is still only a few months ago that Real Madrid and Manchester United were thrashed, and a genuine title challenge was mounted.
By the time the meeting takes place, the newspapers are full of 'crisis' talk, just months after the best league season that any late-teen Red will have lived through. (The kind of late-teen now spouting off on internet forums about his ineptitude, not that they can conjure such words.)
Inadvertently, I am entering the eye of the storm. Or so I expect. The world is chattering about Benitez and his future, and here I am, about to spend part of the morning and almost the entire afternoon with him, chatting one-to-one about the club we both love.
Melwood has clearly come a long way since the days Bill Shankly turned up to find a glorified flea pit. Space-age facilities, pitches that put the lawns at Hampton Court to shame, and a bold red decor; but all fenced off from the world, and autograph hunters, by the same old breeze block brick wall.
I glance across at the legendary hill, constructed for gruelling trudges up and down, and the target boxes divided into nine squares, each with a number painted, the like of which I recall from pictures of Shankly's time. But otherwise it's from another planet, not just another era.
Having been on the Kop for the visit of Lyon, I dread the mood as the final 20 minutes sees a win turn to defeat, and more players limp off. I half expect Rafa to cancel, and for everyone to be in a foul mood; a time for inquests and recriminations.
However, I encounter no such despair; morale seems okay (if, understandably, no-one is performing cartwheels and dancing on tables like the cast of Fame). Admittedly I have no prior experience of the place to compare it with, but I am buoyed by the aura.
I get to see some of the training, but of course, there aren't a lot of fit senior players out there, and it's only a short, gentle session after the night before.
Around noon, Rafa greets me warmly for the second time that day, only now I will have his full, undivided attention. We head to his office, and within minutes he's sketching formations on scraps of loose paper.
Despite the ever-widening criticism, this is a man who, over the previous four seasons, has seen his team average 78 points in the league; or the grand total with which Arsene Wenger won his first title. The team Rafa inherited averaged 62 points in its final two seasons.
This is a man who has raised around £100m in Champions League qualification and progress, and reached two finals.
This is not the ‘70s and ‘80s, when success bred success, as two geniuses held the reins for 24 years, before two other top managers kept things ticking over (and in Dalglish's case, to a new level of aesthetic brilliance).
This is also not the '90s, when Graeme Souness, enjoying the last time the club was as relatively rich as its rivals (pre-Premier League boom, pre-United marketing machine, pre-billionaire backers), broke British records on spending to try and get the Reds back to the top, only to turn them into also-rans.
And so I meet Benítez during a bad spell for the club, but a bad three months; not a bad three years, to point to the record of one of his critics this week.
Some more context. At the end of last season, having shown them their best six months in over a decade, Martin O'Neill was being vilified by the Villains. Now he's great again. Arsene Wenger was being gunned at by Gunners, now he's back on track. Top managers have bad spells. It happens
Rafa makes it clear that I am here so that he can say thank-you for my efforts over the past five years, and to let me know that he's impressed by how much I get right about him and his methods; he finds it unusual that someone takes the time and makes the effort.
Of course, this being Rafa, he points out a couple of things I've got wrong. (I like this: it makes me feel that he is being totally straight with me; and he's clearly right about what I got wrong, as later demonstrated when we get into more depth about how the team defends set-pieces than most people will be privy to.)
Equanimous
The word I'd use to describe the manager is 'equanimous', which my dictionary notes as 'mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, esp. in a difficult situation'.
If he doesn't punch the air in victory, he also won't punch a player in defeat.
But this is not to say that he is not passionate; on several topics he gets very animated. His love for the club is clear. His desire to succeed his clear. His burning ambition to get the most out of what he has at his disposal is clear.
I find him a warm, welcoming man – nothing like the ludicrous 'cold' stereotype – and Melwood is the epitome of calming professionalism. Other staff members point out that they've seen him give lots of encouragement to players, and certainly offers a human touch.
Yes, the conversation is almost exclusively about football, but his office has enough reminders of his family life outside the game to show that he is not some soulless robot, and his humour is clear. And anyway, he didn't invite me there to talk about that week's Strictly Come Dancing, did he?
We spend almost four hours over lunch in his personal meeting room, and afterwards in his office, going through tactics, personnel, and almost anything else you care to mention.
It is such a natural, easy conversation, at times I have to remind myself who I am talking with; and 'with' is the right word. At no point does he talk at me. And in person, his English is easier to understand than it is with a microphone thrust in his face. (For the record, I took no notes, nor made any recordings; it was just two men talking football.)
After several diagrams sketched on A4 sheets, he leads me to the canteen and shows me the day's healthy selection. As I stand trying to decide, Alberto Aquilani taps him on the shoulder to ask about the reserve game later that night. They talk briefly in Italian. The boss turns back, and approves of my choice: paella, which I was pleasantly surprised to find amid the pasta dishes.
Later we discuss the new Italian midfielder: an independent expert had told the club that he would be fit for the end of August, but that ended up being pushed back and back. It was frustrating, but Rafa was very happy with what he was now seeing in training - the lad has vision and technique - even if he obviously still has to adapt to the pace of the English game.
He points out that John Arne Riise ('a good lad') has just texted him to once again to offer his support, and to say Liverpool have got a real gem in Aquilani.
(I like that a player the manager has sold still texts his old boss; no signs of a lack of affection there, even if Rafa makes it clear that it is obviously not his job to be best mates with his charges.)
It was a difficult summer, Rafa explains, with Alonso determined to leave and Barcelona niggling away at Mascherano.
Time To Go?
We are briefly interrupted at different times by Sammy Lee and Frank McParland, and I am introduced to both: intense, driven men who share Rafa's desire for success, and the trustworthy sign of a firm handshake.
I'm not sure if the meeting is supposed to last as long as it is, and I keep asking the boss if he has something else to be doing; but he's taken training, the physios are doing their job, and Rafa isn't about to knock off early. It may have been a few hours, but it's only a small part of his working day.
Even so, I can see how eager he is to have the world understand his ideas, especially when ex-players and the vast majority of the media are clearly hostile and keen to misrepresent him; he knows that unlike some of his rivals, he doesn't have friends in high places, such as Fleet Street, Sky TV, the League Managers' Association and the FA. (These are my assumptions; he gives no specifics. But it's not hard to see which managers work the system for their advantage through old pals networks, and which clubs have greater influence in certain areas.)
Whenever I think I'd better leave him in peace, we get onto another subject. Zonal marking pops up. So, too, does Rafa – from his seat, demonstrating positioning, who should be where, against the backdrop of his broad office window's glare.
This isn't enough. A DVD from his extensive library is slipped into the machine, and now he's showing me how what Liverpool deploy is actually a mix of both zonal and man-marking. I am shown who should be where, and what each individual's job is; how that job changes depending on which foot the taker is using (inswinger/outswinger); and how there is as much personal responsibility as the alternative – everyone knows their job.
Then he takes me, beat by beat, through other teams, and the gross failings of some man-markers, and also points out several players who, despite being labelled man-markers, are marking zones! (men on the posts, and others dotted here and there.) We look at a side who are very successful at defending set-pieces, and he shows me how they defend a similar way to the Reds (and holy cow, they do!); they just happen to have a lot of tall players.
It suddenly occurs to me that if every individual critic of Rafa's could sit down and have a similar conversation, they'd be converted. At the very least, they'd be a lot wiser.
That wouldn't mean they'd suddenly feel mistakes still aren't made: every signing can go bad, every substitution comes with a risk, and so on. You can make the right decisions and get unlucky, and make the wrong decisions and get good fortune.
Stubborn
People inevitably say that Rafa is stubborn, but I don't know one top manager who doesn't have the courage of his convictions. Personally, I don't want a manager who has one set of beliefs one week, and who then changes his mind the next. If you know something works more often than not, you stick with it when it's not; changing is not the answer.
For example, four years of having either the best, or one of the best, set-piece records (defensively), is to be taken more seriously than a spell of ten games. And anyway, will total man-marking make Insua or Mascherano 6ft 5?
And people will criticise his decisions, such as playing three at the back at Sunderland; ignoring that previous deployments of the system, though infrequent, had proved successful.
We discuss the irony of the boos over removing Benayoun (whom he felt had played well, but run himself to a standstill) when a year earlier, the general consensus was that 'he wasn't fit to wear the shirt'.
And of course, there was the issue of confidence. The night before, Liverpool had at last found some of this precious elixir after taking the lead; but as soon as Lyon equalised, you could see it visibly drain away. That happens when things aren't going your way.
Rafa tells me of Luis Aragonés' saying 'You can't buy confidence in Marks & Spencers'. There is no magic wand, no secret message, no miraculous injection; you can only keep plugging away, doing the right thing, and hope that it changes.
We've all seen a striker who can't score for love nor money, then one goes in off his backside and he's bubbling again. That same thing can happen with a team; except on top of individual struggles, that undefinable 'wavelength' confidence goes askew as well. Everyone is hesitant, in their passing and in their movement.
The same group of players who were passing-and-moving to near-perfection in the second half of last season (even when Alonso was absent) haven't suddenly forgotten how to play football.
With candour, Benítez admits to some mistakes, particularly in the transfer market, but points out that he had to gamble on cheaper players when his first choices were out of reach.
We discuss how, for example, people accuse him of wasting money on Dossena ('a top pro', he says, but one who has struggled with the system), yet one reason the Italian isn't in the side is the emergence of Insua – a very shrewd buy.
Whether or not Dossena would eventually come good (if given playing time) almost becomes moot; Insua, for around £1m, is excelling.
Insua could now well be worth much more than the fee paid for both him and Dossena, but people will only focus on the negative. Although he doesn't say so, if Insua had cost £7m and Dossena £1m, there'd be no problem. So ... what's the problem? (And that's before adding Aurelio, a free transfer; three international left-backs, two of whom can also play in midfield, for £8m.)
Later on, as I get the full tour, we pass one lesser known teenage reserve, and Rafa, pulling me to one side so the kid can't hear, makes it clear that this lad has something about him. "Look out for him."
Overhaul
One subject that I bring up is the number of players he's accused of buying.
He grabs the white A4, and draws out lists of how many first team players he inherited that were just not good enough (roughly half). He does the same with the reserve team (almost every player), and then the youth team (every player bar one). It turns out to be around 50 players in total.
So when he is accused of buying far too many players, he points out that he had little choice; that many were bought because they were better than what was already there, even if, with youngsters, you can never guarantee who will make the grade, or how quickly they will progress. And even a 17-year-old needs a professional contract.
He wonders why there is this obsession with all these signings, when every big club stocks its youth and reserve teams with imports and purchases.
My take is this: if you have 50 players at a club (from top to bottom) who you believe are not good enough – and therefore they need to go – you will not replace them sufficiently with 50 signings.
The law of averages say that some new purchases will get injured, some will not settle, some will turn out to be 'not as advertised' (i.e. they couldn't do what was asked of them, or, though well-scouted, were not as good when seen in your team. Some will have been poorly scouted, hence Benítez's desire to improve that side of things.)
Make 50 signings, and maybe, with a good wind, 25 will be successes of varying degrees, from acceptable to outstanding; far less if you're talking about teenagers, who can fail to develop or lose focus.
It might take three years to make those 50 signings, and you may still be very short at every level of the club. So to get the next 25, you might need to buy 50 more, by which time some of the successes have left for varying reasons. So it's a constant process of improvement, hampered by the financial inability to shop for more than the occasional established world-class player.
Before I leave, I get the full guided tour by the boss (known simply as 'boss' to every player), and at the front doors, Rafa shakes my hand not once but twice.
He smiles warmly, wishes me well, pats me on the shoulder, and I can't help but think 'crisis? What crisis?'
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