EXCLUSIVE: serialisation starts today
THE INSIDE STORY OF UNITED’S PROMOTION CAMPAIGN
NEWCASTLE United was a club on its knees when Rafa Benitez arrived in March 2016 – and changed everything.
New book Inside the Rafalution is the story of a football club that had lost touch with its community and sense of purpose – and how one man was able to inspire a city to fall in love with its team again.
It looks at how Benitez changed everything – from the lighting in the canteen to the team’s losing mentality, bringing you right to the heart of why his burning, obsessional drive to find solutions makes him the perfect fit for one of English football’s most bewildering clubs.
Benitez (left) signed 12 players in the summer of 2016 and sold six decades of experience.
He overhauled the way the club operated and inspired a staff. This is a story of how to manage – not just the corners, the free-kicks and team, but an organisation that had been shelled out by years of frustration and underachievement.
In this first part of our serialisation of Mark Douglas’ new book, we look at the Rafa Benitez recruitment rules that helped him to build a titlewinning squad at Newcastle. ASK Rafa Benitez what he looks for in a player and you had better be prepared for a long answer.
These days – through slick, professional, multi-million pound companies like Italian cyber-scouting firm Wyscout – footage of any player is just the click of a mouse away if you’re prepared to invest five figures in a licence.
Benitez was there long before Wyscout. When he was Liverpool manager, he implored the club to invest in two giant satellite dishes at their Melwood training base.
The idea was to be able to track the “big 12” – the leagues in Europe and South America that are of particular interest to Benitez.
He has a personal database that stretches to 14,000 players: past, present and future prospects looked at by scouts at all of his different clubs.
In an ideal world, Benitez would ask his scouts to watch a player between five and 10 times in the flesh. How, Benitez would enquire, would he fit into our system? Does he learn quickly? Is he prepared to sacrifice his own glory if necessary? Does he have the technical qualities? On top of that, there is personality to consider.
Benitez’s former chief scout at Liverpool, Eduardo Macia, described that process in 2010: “We want to know everything about the player, not just how he performs.
“For example, Lucas Leiva; our scout watched him and asked lots of different people about him. Then we spent two weeks in Brazil watching him training, as well as playing.
“From that we hope to be certain about a player. Of course, you can still make a mistake but this method reduces the chances.
Sometimes, even when you know everything, you still get it wrong.
“There are lots of factors to consider, such as language, wife or girlfriend not settling in a new country. You can still get it wrong, but we hope to make the least number of mistakes.”
Benitez did not know the Championship, but he had started to take soundings about what the ideal Championship player looked like. One thing that came up time and time again was character.
Macia says that “strong players” are the ones that Benitez leans towards. Players who can make decisions on the pitch that “win games” are prioritised over the ones who possess individual, eye-catching ability.
Benitez remained steadfast in that belief as he constructed his Newcastle United wish-list. Character would be just as important as quality as he scoured the top two divisions and Europe’s “big 12” looking for players willing to drop into the second tier with a club that would be burdened by great expectations. When you look at the 12 men Benitez signed, what is remarkable is the way that the most high-profile of them have taken the road less travelled to the professional game. He spent £22m on two players who had trekked through the lower leagues to get to the Premier League. One had spent time as a carpenter after dropping out of a Premier League academy. Another had come through a loan spell at Dagenham & Redbridge. There is talent in Premier League academies. It is not a given that a player who has had to fight will be able to match up to what is required at a club like Newcastle. But Benitez was happy to gamble on the personalities of players who arrived at the club with hunger to prove themselves, rather than improve themselves.
Most of all, Benitez wanted to get a sense that the players he was targeting understood the specific needs of being a Newcastle player. A common gripe of supporters was that the club had been used as a shop window by too many players.
Critics could argue Ashley’s approach would always lead to that and Benitez wanted it to change. He made an explicit promise to supporters the days of players using Newcastle as a springboard were behind them.
That element added an extra factor to the mix: making Newcastle a destination club again.
“People think that it is just about signing players and that is it,” Benitez said of his approach to recruitment. “But when you have to change something, you have to change the mood around the club. You could feel that around the city, everyone was excited about the idea of being promoted again. They were talking about, ‘This is our club again’ and they were proud of the team.
“They didn’t see the other things we did [behind-the-scenes at the training ground] but they did see the squad. We needed to change something to ensure we had a competitive team and to bring what they call ‘fresh blood’ in England.” For Benitez, it could not just be about the calibre of player. Those coming in must be able to integrate into what was left of the 2015/16 squad while also understanding what it meant to be a Newcastle player. The club’s dressing room had a reputation for being toxic. Benitez was cooking up the antidote. Inside The Rafalution by Mark Douglas RRP £9.99 is on sale for only £7.99 from The Chronicle front counter, 0845 143 0001 and www.sportmediashop.com. The paperback will also be on sale in all good book stores and Amazon, and the ebook edition is available through Kindle and Apple. Don’t miss tomorrow’s Chronicle for the second day of our exclusive serialisation from Inside the Rafalution, and for all the best in North East sport - turn to Page 72.