Rafa Benitez, Football Manager

dunno about hiddink but the two i cited were in jest......

see with football increasingly turning into professional wrestling storylines, i couldn't tell :( just assumed they were actually that evil

yeah i think if lucescu rly did do that, you would have heard

You guys. Would imagine Hiddink keeps quiet about the armenian genocide though tbh

arry redknapp is a d-day denier

he's a nicer person than fergie, who is obviously a mean, rude, classless bastard. but i'd imagine fergie is a "nicer" read as fairer manager. rafa has fucked up some careers.

yeah i think it's not enough to just say 'irl' about this as if that's what we're all gonna make the call on.

"I think that Mr Hodgson, he doesn't understand. Every single press conference is even worse than the last one. He's talking about things that he doesn't know. And some people cannot see a priest on a mountain of sugar."

no idea what this means but it's a classic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub8NeH_eQ8k

ay! el azucar robado!

Wow that is the best quote. Gonna start using "cannot see a priest on a mountain of sugar" in regular conversation.

This guy is batshit mental, esp. considering I think every press conference of his Liverpool career was kinda worse than the last one form.

is it sort of a "some people wouldn't know a x if it hit them in the face"?

Don't think Rafa made a weekly habit of offending the fans and playing staff in public. Hodgson lied about Rafa banning Kenny from Melwood and implied that Rafa didn't want anything to do with him. Not got a problem with Rafa setting the record straight and telling Roy to button it. In fact I'm fucking delighted.

i'm not over the moon with roy and have serious doubts about him, but looking around forums etc there is quite a vitriolic hatred for him from liverpool fans. it's not going to do us any good....

liverpool fans/fans on forums in acting ott shocker

yes unlike the moderate and civilised debates of other football fans. on arsenal forums it's a furious struggle to decide if wenger is more ornette coleman than pharoah sanders...

"/fans on forums"

Also Wenger is so more Pharoah than Ornette.

football forums are like some outer circle of hell

tb

RIP

just in case i'm not online when the inevitable happens

http://imgur.com/yRLsi.jpg

he'll leave football a very rich man. Astounding, tbh.

He'll get them knocked out of everything else but end up appeasing the fans by winning them the World Club Cup, essentially condensing his Liverpool career down into six months.

this week: spurs win group, rafa fucking things up, jol out, devil with dmac's soul

jol quit, but yeah the hens are repatriating in order to chill

Every time this thread is bumped and he hasn't been sacked breaks my heart a little bit more.

Threads needs my favourite banner for completeness:

http://imgur.com/QaPhC.jpg

http://www.footballfancast.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Ferguson-and-Benitez.jpg

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Football/Pix/pictures/2010/12/15/1292453643310/Rafael-Benitez-001.jpg

only a matter of time before he's in a thomas the tank engine movie imo

the fat controlfreak

http://www.iol.co.za:80/polopoly_fs/intermilan-1.1002782!/image/3240558531.jpg_gen/derivatives/box_300/3240558531.jpg

best manager to win the biggest prize in club football, I think that settles it

fuv. This cun that is all imll

cinider thay updaye frm 9tpub

yay

now he's talking in the third person

not a tez h8r but picking fights with moratti is making him look like a recidivist choad

chill big man, don't pick fights with bigger men

Yes, but he only needs to buy "4 or 5 good players" to make it right. Again.

What's he gone and said now? Blaming it on the guy who's bankrolled five straight scudetti and the Champions League, does that really have the air of a successful strategy?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/gossip_and_transfers/9302348.stm

"There are three possibilities for the club," the former Liverpool boss said in Abu Dhabi. "One, 100% support for the coach and buy four or five players to build a stronger team with competition among the players to be able to carry on winning matches and trophies.

"Two, carry on like this without a project, without planning, and go ahead with one person to blame, for the whole season.

"The third," he added, "is to speak to my agent to reach an agreement if there is not this support. Simple."

I'm sure Ronan or Darragh will have the detail, but wasn't he only 4 or 5 players from winning the title right up until he left Liverpool?

But Inter's president Massimo Moratti told his coach: "It's not the moment to ask for reinforcements."

That'll be a no then.

How is he meant to work there with a chairman like Moratti clearly undermining him and his abilities?

I know, it's unbelievable, isn't it?

when he gets sacked from inter he'll have earned prob about 15 mil this past twelve months for refusing to do his job

treble winners + rafa + £100m transfer fund = might just about scrape a champions league place.

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa omg.

this guy is a fucking loony bin.

like i just thought he was a bad manager before but this is shocking.

how the fuck can you take over a treble winning side only minus a balotelli (albeit with an added coutinho) and say there is no plan? HOW DO YOU THINK THEY WON THE FUCKING TREBLE?

This guy IS THE WORST FUCKING MANAGER.

Also, you might think that 'having a plan' would be the manager's job, at least on some level

this is really quite strange, or would be for any other manager. maybe he knows he is going to be fired but wants to make the best case possible, combining moratti's harsh words after the defeat to werder bremen with some supposed withholding of support to make it look like constructive dismissal.

there isn't really any way to cut it that doesn't make 'four or five players' sound ridiculous. certainly inter's squad is fairly old, and the injury to samuel shows that they could use a little cover, but the same applies to just about any team. he does however have coutinho and biabany -- surely preferable to balotelli in benitez eyes, can you imagine those two working together? adding several new players of similar quality would give inter a ridiculously top heavy squad.

still i find it interesting in the context of benitez' control freakery. mourinho is another who would like total control, and he overstepped the mark at chelsea when he thought he could leverage his personality cult among players & supporters against abramovich. but these days he seems basically aware of his own limitations, whereas benitez clearly asks for the impossible.

by contrast his inter team this year have sometimes been playing a chaotic free-flowing football that is quite unlike him. it's almost like he knew he had signed up for a suicide mission in taking over after mourinho's treble, and consequently has a sort of carefree lucidity. it's difficult to see how his career recovers now, but in his yearning TOTALCONTROL of all aspects of the team, individual psychologies entirely neglected and players treated as mere automata, he sat set a high water mark for determinist folly in football.

benitez_howling_at_the_cosmos.ogg

wonder what odds you can get on rafa eventually becoming england manager

12/1

That has to happen, surely? Would be the best thing ever.