Hooked by whole new ball game

May 21 2007 Nick Smith, Liverpool Daily Post

IN the first of a two-part special, Rafael Benitez’s biographer Paco Lloret tells Nick Smith the secrets of his friend’s success

A QUIZ question: The 1984 Olympic men’s basketball final launched which sporting icon to global fame?

The record books and search engines will tell you that the answer is Michael Jordan, then a 21-year-old who spearheaded that gold medal victory before his earning and marketing potential rocketed higher than any leap for a slam dunk.

However, there is an alternative answer to the question even if it wasn’t obvious at the time.

Because there was another legend in the making when that final showdown in Los Angeles was taking place – also in his early 20s, equally as intense and competitive and also setting out on the path to fame and fortune.

Only he was considerably lagging behind, mainly because at that time he was a struggling lower league footballer at Spanish obscurities AD Parla, where promotion to Segunda Division B was the focus of his ambitions, rather than Olympic gold medals.

But it was the team Jordan and his Americans beat 92-65 in that final that the young Rafael Benitez was fascinated by, him being one of many admirers the Spanish silver medallists attracted during their exploits in that competition.

For him it was the ‘eureka’ moment he had been looking for and by combining the ideals of basketball with those of his other passion, chess, he soon hit upon the formula that would fuel his coaching genius.

Paco Lloret, a TV journalist in Spain and author of Benitez’s authorised biography, has charted the Liverpool manager’s rise through the coaching ranks to the top.

And he insists that the basketball boom in Spain was the starting point of Benitez’s famous flair for the application of different ideas and methods that made him stand out from the pack.

“Basketball was the game that inspired him,” says Lloret. “He felt that football coaches hadn’t developed as much as they had in basketball in terms of the way they worked with a blackboard to educate players about what they had to do.

“They had systems to improve players’ games and maximise it and Rafa was fascinated by that.