[lfc-news] Liverpool hails the new king of the Kop - Independent

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The Independent, 5 May 2005
Liverpool hails the new king of the Kop
By James Lawton

Liverpool may be a great port city with a rollicking history, but it is
also a village, a place where people can find out about each other in
the time it takes to sink a pint and make a roll-up. It is why the
coronation of Rafael Benitez as the King of the Kop this week was a
formality - a thunderous one, no doubt, but still a formality.

In the course of a season which has, to say the least, been somewhat
erratic on its way to the stars and a place in the Champions' League
final in Istanbul in three weeks' time, the people of Liverpool have
established a few certainties about the nature of the man who has come
among them so unassumingly.

They know he is a football man to the last inch of his gently rotund
body, and that his achievements in Spain and Europe were deeply
impressive. They knew he would attack the power and the pretension of
Chelsea for as long as it was feasible. And they know he spends every
working day amid his troops out on the training field, without retiring
to his office to monitor radio shows and gauge levels of criticism,
within and without the club - a habit developed over the years by his
embattled predecessor, Gérard Houllier. Liverpool got to know that, too.

The football city also knows that Benitez has endured a season which
would have tested the resolve and the ambition of any manager: injuries
to key players at all the wrong times, a run of misfortune crowned,
grotesquely, in the first leg at Stamford Bridge when arguably his most
important player, the midfielder Xabi Alonso, was suspended after
wrongly receiving a yellow card because of the tawdry theatricals of
Chelsea's Eidur Gudjohnsen. And what has been Benitez's reaction to even
the worst of his luck - and most serious shortfall in some of his team's
Premiership performances? He has bitten his lip and battled on.

In the glory of victory over Chelsea this week, there was a flashpoint
of memory from a raw Saturday afternoon at Newcastle a few months ago.
Liverpool had lost, fallen back another stride in their effort to
qualify for European football next season. How could he entertain the
idea of beating Juventus in the next round of the Champions' League?

"In football you have taken the blows, and you have to see what is
possible," Benitez said. "I believe in my players... I like their
character. We know it is probably not possible to have much more bad
luck. Maybe we will never have a such a season again, but we are still
alive, believe me. Can we beat Juventus? Of course."

What Liverpool sees when it looks at Benitez is a shrewd football
operator, an old player at heart - and a good man. A man, that is,
without an ego that crushes those around him; a man who knows life as
well as he knows football.

In his willingness to celebrate Jamie Carragher - as the outstandingly
consistent presence in a team of remarkable spirit, if not always
technical accomplishment - he goes straight back to the man who laid
down the tradition which was so exultantly celebrated at Anfield this week.

Benitez does not share all of Bill Shankly's traits, to say the least of
it. You cannot imagine him clambering up on to his desk, clenching his
fists and telling you: "My team is going to go off like a great bloody
bomb in the sky." But there is a bond, and it is the one to do with
respect for the game and the people in it.

Shankly hated to lose but he was rarely peevish in defeat, and he would
have been shocked by the latest example of overweening ego displayed by
Jose Mourinho when he was required to face his first serious
disappointment of the season this week.

Shankly once complained that Ajax were the most defensive team he had
ever seen, but then few begrudged him a small display of angst. Ajax
had, after all, just beaten Liverpool 5-0.

Shankly revered Jock Stein and Matt Busby, and always showed respect to
his rivals. Mourinho broke that law of class once again this week when
he declared the "best team lost".

Benitez could afford to take the high ground, and naturally he did. He
said how pleased he was to get by such a formidable team.

Mourinho found such grace elusive - once again. It was to revive,
unpleasantly, the memory of his behaviour after losing to Barcelona at
the Nou Camp, the controversy over the referee, Anders Frisk, which
eventually produced the admission that he had lied quite brazenly.

Yes, of course, Mourinho has done brilliant work at Stamford Bridge. He
did not so much win as annex the Premiership. His drawing out of the
competitive instincts of all his key players was nothing less than
inspired and relentless. Until Anfield, that is. There he found he had
confront some bitter truths. One of them was that when faced by the loss
of Damien Duff and Arjen Robben, in many ways his most important
players, he proved himself less than a tactical genius.

As he did in the first leg, he resorted to the long ball, and the mark
of his desperation was the sight of the defender Robert Huth, thrown up
front, and the arrival of the failed Mateja Kezman. When Manchester
United signed Wayne Rooney, Mourinho said he preferred Kezman. He could
"do more things". It is one of quite a few declarations that, it would
be nice to think, Mourinho now regrets.

Now he has the vast resources of Roman Abramovich at his disposal as he
goes about reseeding his team, he must see it is a job that demands
urgency in several areas, not least in that of creativity.

He needs a midfield playmaker who can break open a defence with a single
pass - someone like Alonso. He needs a superior striking force; Didier
Drogba has failed too many times, and Kezman has never looked likely to
be an authentic force.

Just as pressingly he needs to take a look in the mirror. When he blamed
officials this week, when he said Liverpool's victory came from the moon
or the Kop, he was running from the truth. Chelsea had a lot of the
ball, but made just once chance ... and if Luis Garcia's decisive goal
was questionable, there was no doubt that Liverpool were due a penalty -
and the sending-off of Petr Cech - when Baros was flattened in the
penalty area.

In the end there was no question. The night - and maybe the football
year - belonged to Benitez. As the Kop sang so passionately, it could
not have been in better hands.

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