Rafa Benitez: Liverpool FC display was "almost perfect"

Dec 12 2007 by Ian Doyle, Liverpool Daily Post

PROUD Rafael Benitez believes an “almost perfect” team performance has helped safeguard his Anfield future as Liverpool won through to the knockout stages of the Champions League in emphatic fashion last night.

Goals from Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres inside the first 11 minutes sent Benitez’s side on their way to a 4-0 victory over Marseille in their decisive Group A clash in France.

Second-half strikes from Dirk Kuyt and Ryan Babel sealed the win, which ensured second place in the group behind Porto, who beat Besiktas 2-0 in last night’s other group game.

The result was the ideal start to a pivotal few days for Benitez and his players, with the manager scheduled to meet with owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks ahead of Sunday’s visit of champions Manchester United.

And Benitez said: “I am really proud to be the manager of this club because you can see our supporters are fantastic and especially our players tonight.

“It was a fantastic team performance, and that was the key. It was a bad pitch, a windy day but we were compact, worked hard together, were good on the counter-attack and didn’t concede. Everything was almost perfect.

“I say almost because we could have scored more goals and you can never be completely perfect, but the team played really well and I can’t have any complaints from them.

“People will talk about the second goal of Torres and it would be easy to talk about him and Gerrard, but Kewell, Benayoun, Kuyt, the defence and everyone played well.

“Mascherano got a bad kick in his shin towards the end and kept going and it showed what a great team performance it was.”

The victory will surely strengthen Benitez’s position going into the meeting with the American owners, which could take place as early as tomorrow.

But although the Spaniard preferred to concentrate on his team’s victory, he believes Liverpool demonstrated the potential of what they could achieve under his tutelage.

“I have always had confidence and maintained my confidence because you can see the players, supporters and everyone happy,” said Benitez. “The key to the future is to keep growing.

“We showed our potential tonight. This squad is better than last year and we showed today that we can do different things. We can use different players and it is working.”

Benitez added: “I wasn’t thinking about the game and the meeting. They are two different things. As a manager you must do your job, and the supporters and players and everyone were together today and we all want to win.

“I must think about the United game now. We just want to talk about that and

not anything else.

“I’m not thinking about my situation every day. I’m just thinking about improving the performance. The players showed character tonight and commitment.”

Gerrard’s opener took him beyond Michael Owen as the club’s leading goalscorer in European competition with 23 strikes.

And Benitez added: “We approached the game in the way we have some other away Champions League games by starting on the attack. We have a Plan A and a Plan B, but we only needed a Plan A tonight.

“When we lost against Besiktas I said that we had confidence we could still get through. We knew we had to win our last three games.

“We knew we had played badly against Marseille in the first game but we still had the confidence we could go through.”

As a group runner-up, Liverpool will face a group winner from AC Milan, Internazionale, Barcelona , Real Madrid or possibly Sevilla in the draw for the first knockout round on Friday week but Benitez said: “It doesn’t matter who we can draw, we just want to enjoy the moment.

“People last year said we couldn’t beat Barcelona but we did and it’s important we keep growing.

“You can see the difference almost every week, we are scoring goals and not conceding.

“It’s a good moment for us, we are playing well and feel we can play anyone, we have enough confidence now.”

Liverpool became the first English team to win at the Stade Velodrome, and a disappointed Marseille coach Eric Gerets said: “Liverpool played really well, and when you have a player like Steven Gerrard in midfield it’s really hard to play well against them.”