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

“Spain had won a silver medal in the 1984 Olympics at basketball and he tried to discover the secret of that game.

“He thought that he had to apply the tactics and the systems to footballers. They were different sports but he wanted to know how the coaches worked with the players.

“It was a simple as the coaches telling the players things and the players doing exactly what the coaches told them.

“That was always difficult in football because the game is more free but Rafa wanted to control the players, and that was why he was so interested in it.

“Sometimes if you watch his teams, all the players know their places and what to do in terms of their movements. That’s why he is very fond of chess too.

“When he was a player the last place he was at was Linares, which is where the national chess tournament in Spain is held.

“When Rafa was playing there in 1985- 86 he used to go to play chess with people who played at a high level and he was very fond of that game.”

It was while plotting his first promotion with Extremadura in 1997 that Benitez first contacted Lloret, asking if he could borrow some video tapes from the TV station he worked for to study his next opponents.

But Valencia supporter Lloret first heard the name during the early 1990s through a mutual friend, when Benitez was serving his coaching apprenticeship in the Real Madrid youth system.

And a bold and seemingly absurd statement during that conversation still sticks in his mind.

“A journalist friend of mine, Emilio Garcia Carrasco, told me he had a friend who was the best coach he had ever seen and will be number one in Spain,” Lloret recalls.