A good story and a good argument too

[Guatered]

Today's Times preview of Tuesday night features a surprising (and quite funny) story about Rafa before the 2005 Final. However, it goes on to argue that 2005 wasn't a fluke- since Rafa arrived, we have the best record of the English clubs in European football in terms of wins/draws/defeats, better than Arsenal and Chelsea and easily better than United.

 

A good quote from Rafa to finish it too...

 

 

Liverpool on song for Europe

Chumps at home but champs in Europe. What is it about Rafa Benitez?s team that will make Barça fear them on Tuesday?

 

In the small hours on the day of the 2005 Champions League final, Rafael Benitez loitered in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza hotel in Istanbul, chatting to two of his oldest friends, Teo Escamilla, a former teammate from the Spanish second division, and Emilio Garcia Carrasco, a television commentator. Both had travelled from Madrid to share their amigo?s big moment and as the trio had passed the evening at the hotel bar, Benitez eschewing drink as usual to talk football and chomp on peanuts, Escamilla and Carrasco had found the manager in familiar form.

 

Then, in the lobby, he did something that surprised the pair. There were four lifts and Benitez suddenly pointed to one. ?If this lift comes down, we?ll win the final on penalties,? smiled the normally unsuperstitious manager. A bell dinged. The doors at which Benitez had pointed opened. Saying nothing, he departed for his room on the seventh floor, his grin wider, his eyes glinting. Benitez smiled again on Friday at mention of the word that has come to be attached to that whole strange sequence of events leading to Liverpool conquering Europe two years ago - miracle.

 

The idea of the miracle is always going to be more exciting than that of the methodical. In 2005 it was possible to see Liverpool?s Champions League campaign as star-crossed, one of the game?s unexplainable marvels, a year when magic touched a football club to the extent that its manager could even have premonitions in hotel lobbies - or more extraordinary still, beat Milan in a final with a starting XI including Djimi Traore. That, of course, ignores the alternative version of the story, the one in which mundanities such as Benitez?s painstaking training ground preparation or the onfield effort and focus of Jamie Carragher, Sami Hyypia and Steven Gerrard, are to the fore. The miracle concept also fails to explain what has happened since.

 

Lightning does not strike twice. If 2005 was simply ?special? for Liverpool, why, two seasons on, are they continuing to achieve the best Champions League results of all English clubs? What about two weeks ago in Barcelona? Since Benitez arrived in 2004, Liverpool have out-performed Manchester United and Chelsea and, by a small margin, Arsenal, in terms of games won in football?s primary club competition. A quick recap of their opponents over that period confirms that it has not been because of flukes or easy fixtures. There is consistency about Benitez?s success in Europe, just as there was at Valencia, where he made a serious challenge in the Champions League before winning the Uefa Cup in 2003-4.

 

England, perhaps, still cannot get its collective head around the manager and there was probably less surprise abroad about Liverpool?s 2-1 victory in the Nou Camp than at home. Benitez knows his capabilities. The lift story is revealed in a biography of the manager by his friend, the Spanish radio journalist Paco Lloret, who says that when they talk before any match, no matter how difficult, the same word always comes into Benitez?s analysis: ?winnable?.

 

Perhaps the Spaniard?s fearlessness is best suited to the big, one-off occasions of a knockout competition. Liverpool?s Premiership form continues to cower in the shadow of their European performances. The pattern was most spectacular in 2004-5: in the day job the team finished fifth behind Everton, losing 14 times, with defeats by the likes of Crystal Palace and Southampton, while slaying Juventus, Chelsea and Milan on midweek evenings. Again the theories that seemed to hold true then - that Benitez?s foreign signings were still adapting to English football, that he was being surprised by unfamiliar domestic opponents, that the squad was only big enough for cup challenges rather than a league - now seem less definitive given that, two seasons later, Liverpool?s pattern of champs in Europe, chumps in England, is still being repeated.

 

The muscular, high-tempo pressing game always favoured by Benitez, to the point that his Valencia were known as the Crushing Machine, seems suited to mangling continental opponents who are less equipped for a physical challenge than English ones.

 

Benitez also likes defence-based, compact, counter-attacking play, the type of approach that has always flourished for teams in Europe, where a 0-0 or a stolen away goal is always more valuable than in a 38-game league campaign. There is also the fact that clubs have traditions, and Liverpool?s is of success in Europe, and that players like Carragher and Gerrard are inspired when they are standing in the lineups and that Champions League music starts.

 

Benitez believes that Liverpool have lost nothing of what made them special in 2005 and have only improved. ?This team, my team now, I think it is better,? he said. ?I think in 2005 in the Champions League we were spectacular. It was really difficult to play against Olympiakos and Leverkusen and Juventus and Chelsea. They were top sides and some people say, ?Luck?. No. Luck is one or two games, but not over a lot of games.?

 

For a spell in the Nou Camp, Barcelona were weaving through on Jose Reina?s goal as if Benitez?s players were training cones, but there was a nervelessness about Liverpool. They kept their discipline, kept exerting physical pressure, kept looking for Craig Bellamy and Dirk Kuyt on the counter, and the gameplan prevailed. Benitez did not dismiss the idea that beating the current European champions over two legs would be more satisfying than defeating Milan in Istanbul. ?It would be good. For me, beating Barcelona means you can beat any of the top sides. The only thing is, you have to do it with more regularity, you must be more consistent.?

 

This is Benitez?s mantra and this is why, at full-time in Istanbul, rather than cavorting before the fans with the rest of the Liverpool staff, he made a beeline for Djibril Cisse to discuss a technical detail that had arisen during his appearance as a substitute.

 

Barcelona travel to Merseyside talking about attack, having turned around a Copa del Rey tie against Real Zaragoza in midweek by switching to 3-4-3, winning on the night 2-1 to progress on away goals.

 

Benitez is quick to dismiss concerns about Ronaldinho?s form and fitness and believes that Samuel Eto?o will return to improve the Catalans. Barça were very successful away from home against his Valencia team, ?but we are playing in Anfield, not the Mestalla, and that is a big difference?.

[Paul B]

Read that this morning and thought it was a cracking article. The league table of the top four English teams in Europe that accompanied the article was also very gratifying.

[Guest 70400]

I think you'll do well in Europe -- the teams that will most likely give you trouble are Chelsea, Arsenal and United.

[Ombudsam]

Benitez also likes defence-based, compact, counter-attacking play,

 

disagree.

 

also disagree about prem chumps. well last season anyway

[Guest Jennings]

?If this lift comes down, we?ll win the final on penalties,?

 

I always do stuff like that. The worst one I ever did was on the day that we were playing Utd in the cup final. As I was in the car I said "if the next sign I see says Liverpool then we will win the cup". I looked away from the road at the radio and it was flashing "MANU". It had switched in to manual mode.

 

I knew then that we had lost...even before I had seen the white Armani suits!

[Barnesy_10]

I remember that Champs League qualifier when he said in the pre match interview that Carra would score..... and he did..

[Michael]

I always do stuff like that. The worst one I ever did was on the day that we were playing Utd in the cup final. As I was in the car I said "if the next sign I see says Liverpool then we will win the cup". I looked away from the road at the radio and it was flashing "MANU". It had switched in to manual mode.

 

I knew then that we had lost...even before I had seen the white Armani suits!

 

 

Always tune it to 5"LIVE"

[chrisbonnie]

personally im sick of reading about Istanbul ,it was 2 years ago now, sure more than half of that team dont even play for us now, so bringing "that night" into the equation regarding anytime we`re down in a game is a load of b******s if you ask me

 

it was great and all, well ,it was better than great, it was the best night of my life thats for sure, but i think its time we moved on

[Keita]

Anyone else think we will get the Mancs in the next round should we both go through.

[Guest Kev]

Anyone else think we will get the Mancs in the next round should we both go through.

 

If all 4 English teams get through or even 3 of them, then 2 will definately face each other.

[Guatered]

Can teams be drawn against other teams from their own country from the next round? I fancy the other 3 English teams to get through (don't want to jinx us so won't say anything there!) But if all 4 do go through, odds are there will be at least one all-premiership tie.

 

Personally i think we'd have a chance against any of them, but would rather not be drawn against them- I'd much rather chelsea and man u faced off for example, to be guaranteed rid of one of them. I'd prefer pretty much any other team than the other English sides- and I do think an English team will win it overall.

[Guest oyvmong]

Anyone else think we will get the Mancs in the next round should we both go through.

 

For what it's worth, I have a feeling that we'll meet Lyon if we get through to the next round. That would be great.

[Ombudsam]

personally im sick of reading about Istanbul ,it was 2 years ago now, sure more than half of that team dont even play for us now, so bringing "that night" into the equation regarding anytime we`re down in a game is a load of b******s if you ask me

 

it was great and all, well ,it was better than great, it was the best night of my life thats for sure, but i think its time we moved on

 

Sort of sentence you'd expect from a manc

 

The winners of the champ's league will deffo be english this year. Especially if we do barca. This country has the best teams in europe

[Coyler]

The way the b*****d gods are masturbating United this season they'll save us for them for the final. They'll be savaged with injuries; we'll have a full-strength team but they'll wallop us 6-0 to complete their treble: Neville hat-trick, Carragher and Gerrard own goals, Ferguson brings himself on for the final two minutes and gets the last one.

[Ombudsam]

LOL

[wacko]

Can teams be drawn against other teams from their own country from the next round?

Yup. In the last 16 you can't face teams from your own country nor the other team from your group. After that, anything goes.

[Mike]

don't believe people are stupid enough to continually talk about who we might get in the next round.

we've got a slender advantage at half time to barcelona and that is it.

people never learn.

[Stevie H]

don't believe people are stupid enough to continually talk about who we might get in the next round.

we've got a slender advantage at half time to barcelona and that is it.

people never learn.

totally. it's f***ing idiocy.

[Guest]

Agree totally.

[mally]

don't believe people are stupid enough to continually talk about who we might get in the next round.

we've got a slender advantage at half time to barcelona and that is it.

people never learn.

 

yeah but it's about hope. has terminator 2 taught you nothing?

[Guest sniffer]

So who would everyone want to meet in the next round IF we get past Barca? How about Bayern Munich?

[Stevie H]

So who would everyone want to meet in the next round IF we get past Barca? How about Bayern Munich?

FFS. how about we get past european champions barcelona first?

[Ombudsam]

totally. it's f***ing idiocy.

 

They've probably cost us the tie already