The recent reports from Madrid claim that Florentino Perez is not satisfied with Manuel Pellegrinin’s work this season, which is something we could have expected from Perez but these also suggest that Rafa Benitez is seen as one of the favourites to replace him. Well, we can only pray this doesn’t happen. Yes, Rafa had a lot of success with Valencia and he knows Primera inside out but what he has done with Liverpool should prevent even second division clubs from taking him into consideration, let alone Real Madrid.
First of all, Rafa is not known to have good man management skills, which is an absolute must for any Real boss since you cannot find a single Liverpool player who will tell you good things about the manager (if they are sincere, that is). His style of play clearly doesn’t suit a club like Real as we cannot call that what Liverpool are playing attractive football, can we? Can you imagine players like Ronaldo and Kaka being asked to close down the opposing full-backs on regular basis? Well, neither can I.
Benitez’s record at Liverpool speaks for itself as not only did he fail to bring the Premiership title to Anfield, which is what he’d been brought for in the first place, but he turned the Reds into a mid table team despite the piles of cash he spent on new players. Managers in football today need to be able to produce results on a short term basis, while Rafa has had more than five years and he produced nothing.
I, for once, think Manuel Pellegrini is doing a decent job this season and the most important thing is the team are constantly improving, thus there is no need for a change of personnel. Los Merengues have had a lot of injury problems but they are still just five points behind Barca and have much easier fixture list than the fierce rivals. The team are doing really well in the Champions League, where they are hot favourites against Lyon and with the team desperately needing continuity, Manuel Pellegrini remains the best choice. Should Perez opt to sack him (hopefully this won’t happen), Rafa Benitez shouldn’t even be taken into consideration.
