BENALI’S PRIDE AT BEING A ONE-CLUB MAN

• BENALI admits a bitter property dispute with former Southampton chairman Nicola Cortese was the ‘saddest’ and ‘most stressful’ time of his life. Cortese rented the Benali family home when he arrived in 2009 and soon broke the tenancy agreement by embarking upon major alterations without permission. He then flew into a rage during a meeting with Benali, blanked his calls and emails and, later, banned him from his match-day hospitality duties and tried to have him escorted from St Mary’s Stadium. Benali felt he had no option but to serve notice on his tenant and launch legal proceedings against Saints because the property deal was in the name of the club. ‘It was horrendous,’ says Benali. ‘A nightmare. Not just for me but my family. I wanted to sit in the stands and support as we always had.’ When Cortese departed in 2014 Benali was welcomed back and has since become a club ambassador. • BOB HIGGINS’ crimes send a shiver through Benali and he will never escape feelings of sorrow for young team-mates who suffered. ‘I still feel saddened for them,’ says Benali, who came through the Southampton youth ranks under Higgins, a coach jailed for 24 years in 2019 for the sexual abuse of young players in his care. ‘It’s heartbreaking. I am sure it hasn’t been easy to live with. I can only hope the sentence has brought them some degree of closure.’ Benali was not among those targeted by Higgins. As a local boy, he would not stay overnight at Southampton’s residential camps but he recalls in his new autobiography how, at the age of 14, at a tournament in Sweden, he and other teenage players were told to strip naked for a ‘soap-water massage’. They were told that was what professional players did. ‘Bob had such a powerful role,’ says Benali. ‘He was the key to whether youngsters were kept on. I didn’t experience anything but I’m sorry they did.’