No, I’m not saying Rafa should be manager. I love Sir Dalglish much too much.
FSG must be making some plans to unveil KK as manager when the time is right. It will be bigger than the royal wedding in red households when it happens.
However, back to the point of this article: Is there a place at the LFC table for the 51 year old Rafael Benítez Maudes?
Let’s look at just one of the many positives of Rafa:
He loves the club, the people and the city. Enough said.
But there is a little more:
Rafa turns up at the memorial service for the 96 out of respect and not self-promotion. He splashes the cash he got from the H&G shite, by not wanting to take the money away from the club/community, and gave large sums of it back. Never once in 6 years did he disrespected the fans and always knew he had them on his side. Do you remember the marches and protests on his behalf? He decided to take more control of the now praised Academy so going against the traditions that had brought Carra, Stevie Owen and Fowler. More importantly, he brought back King Kenny. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Oh I forgot …..
Lest we forget, Rafa won the 5th big lady we´d all been waiting for in Istanbul and even had a play written about it. He stood up to Fergie with what the press called his ‘rant’, which he had written down calmly. He was in a no win situation with H&G and never abandoned ship or complained when they blatantly stealing the money he needed for the squad. He tried to keep the club as stable as he could so we could keep fighting on. He got us closer to the Scum than we had in donkey´s. We saw he had the stature to be compared with the great managers of our glorious past. The greatest servant of them all said this:
“My respect for Rafa will always run deep partly because he invited me back…. It took a strong man to allow a predecessor back in the building…so I admired Rafa for not worrying about the past and simply doing what he thought was best for the club.”
Read the last part again please, KK believes what Rafa did was in the interests of the club. This is the traditional Dalglish mantra. All of the positives mentioned above were in the best interests of LFC.
(I was now going to write some negatives to give a more balanced view but there are so few of them and those are tiny in comparison).
It is easy to see now that Rafa understood the values and challenges of turning the club round, but was fighting a losing battle with board and funds. He seemed to have a traditionally socialist view of his role and in my view always understood the club was not about the money or even the winning but the fans and they needed to be heard. He always stood for what he believed in and one of them was not being afraid to bring back someone who is now so central to the club´s past, present and shortly its future. Supporters all wanted KK back and it was done on Rafa´s shift. What courage, thank you once more
There is rumour of him moving to an English club. I would hate to see you in the opposition´s dugout, wouldn´t you. There must be something LFC can do he is just too valuable for our cause.
By Shaun Dowling