RAFA THE REALIST
Benitez: My teams went for Real and Barcelona ...but I can’t take on City
Rafa Benitez was thinking back. all the way to September 12, 1998. He was manager of newly promoted extremadura then, playing their second game of the season in La Liga. Barcelona away. not the easiest.
Pep Guardiola was Barcelona’s captain, Patrick Kluivert and the De Boer brothers among the new summer signings. they went into a team that already included Luis figo and Rivaldo.
‘We played 4-4-2,’ said Benitez. ‘We pressed high. the difference between then and now is massive. You see Chelsea today? Brighton did a good game, but they concede four goals. there is a huge difference between the rest and the top six. they are spending much more money.’
Benitez is a pragmatist. He doesn’t really do wistful, but it was plain he missed the days when he could come to a place like the etihad, and have a go. He bristled a little when asked if he would like to attack more.
‘Who has the record for goals in the Champions League? With Liverpool and Real Madrid,’ he added. ‘if we can score 10, we score 10. if we have the players to attack, we attack. But you have to defend against the best team in the country.
‘People say, “Oh, the teams at the bottom, they must do this, they have to do that”, but if you are a little bit open . . . well, you can see, in the last 10 minutes we were a little bit open and we could have conceded another two goals. to find the balance between defending well, creating something, scoring goals and not being embarrassed by these teams is quite difficult.’
this wasn’t just a lament about newcastle’s transfer window predicament though. and Benitez has noted the way fellow promoted clubs have been sucked towards the relegation zone. He has witnessed the naivety in players without Premier League experience.
‘i said Burnley, Swansea, clubs like that, they have 70 per cent of the squad who know the Premier League, then they add two or three more and they are even better,’ Benitez concluded. ‘if you come up you have to add five or 10 players and it is a massive amount of money. We are organised but the difficulty is that Sergio aguero, Leroy Sane will make the difference.’
after Manchester City lost at Liverpool, it was optimistically concluded that Jurgen Klopp had delivered the blueprint. City would be reined in now, next year would be different, because Liverpool had shown how to beat them. Here was the reality.
the fact is the way Klopp has constructed his team to play, is perfect for combating
Manchester City. Other clubs can’t do it. they do not have the pace, the discipline, the experience to play a ferocious high press. Most importantly they do not have players who can then take advantage and win the match. newcastle do not have a single player who would get in Liverpool’s squad.
Guardiola said he did not know what to expect after anfield, whether more teams would try Liverpool’s method. now he has his answer. tottenham might do it, but City’s next Premier League opponents are West Brom and we can already visualise 10 men behind the ball. it is to Guardiola’s credit that he has instilled his philosophy with such fervour that City, like Barcelona, never waver. and Benitez is right, with aguero and Sane, backed up by Raheem Sterling, and Kevin De Bruyne, most weeks they will get through.
City have failed to score five times in a year, and two of those were cup games, with understrength teams. City cannot play on the counter-attack, as Liverpool did at anfield, because most of the time there is no attack to counter.
newcastle had 18 per cent of possession in the first half. that puts pressure on City to invent paths through but also to be mindful of that one breakaway — and, sure enough, it came through Jacob Murphy — because dominance can be as mentally exhausting as defending. Sir alex ferguson said it wasn’t the defeat that was important, but the reaction in the next game. Guardiola acknowledged that, too.
He said if City had failed to beat newcastle, there would be doubts. He was aware that newcastle had once lost a 12-point lead with 15 games remaining — City’s position before this match. and he is countering that by ticking off the victories.
Some managers do not like to talk about the title. they don’t like to admit they are in the box seat. it only adds to the pressure. Guardiola isn’t like that. Before the game, he told his players the target was 11 wins and there is nothing any other team can do. now it is 10.
‘We have been the best team for 24 games now,’ said Guardiola. ‘But that does not matter. What matters is being best from games 25 to 38. We need to win 10. i tell the players. Liverpool does not matter.’
it could be closer than that even, considering City’s next 10 league games contain matches against Chelsea and Manchester United. indeed, there are permutations that could see City claiming the league title in the Manchester derby in april.
What is certain, however, is that there will be many more games like this, afternoons in which City have to show determination against massed ranks of resistance. On Saturday, a perfect aguero hat-trick — left foot, right foot and a header — got them through. Benitez can be forgiven, therefore, for keeping any sympathetic violins locked securely in the case.