At 2005, he was on the top of the world with Liverpool, after winning the Champions League in one of the most exciting finals ever played in this competition. In 2022, he is out of the job, and being mention in the same sentence with Olympiakos football club from the Greek league. Rafa Benitez was one of the biggest coaching stars in recent years, but his star is fading away slowly. His biggest success, apart from two La Liga titles with Valencia was the Champions League title with Liverpool, but 11 years after leaving the Reds, he managed to anger them by surprisingly taking over their biggest rivals – Everton. And now he talked about the experience for Football Daily.Babel opens up on a weird relationship with his “big uncle” Benitez at AnfieldUpon leaving Liverpool, he coached Inter Milan, Chelsea (interim manager), Napoli, Real, Newcastle and Dalian but he only had two big trophies to show for in all those clubs together: FIFA Club World Cup with Inter and UEFA Europa League with Chelsea. So, without a job, he surprisingly decided to take charge of Everton. Sure, his wife and daughters were living in the Liverpool area since 2005, and he certainly wanted to be closer to them again, but taking over the biggest ‘enemy’ who was under financial burden already wasn’t an intelligent move. But Rafa never questioned the decision, but rather gave his own reasons for failing with the Toffies.“I thought we could improve everything… in terms of staff, departments, squad, things like that. It was a nice time in terms of experience and a shame at the same time. You have to analyse the context. When they came with the offer, I knew (fans) would say ‘you were at Liverpool’ and it would be a problem. I have a lot of friends that are Blues, they knew I would give everything and try to do my best to improve things. I knew it could be difficult but because I was Red, maybe I couldn’t make some decisions that were very clear for us at the beginning” said the Spaniard.Whatever you do, just don’t oppose Rafa BenitezUnable to do things his way, Benitez ‘lost the plot’ and allowed nine defeats in 13 games, which was enough to get the sack. Still, the Spaniard failed to mention a possible own guilt in the Everton demise, but rather focused on the ‘You are a Red’ excuse.“I had a meeting with a department head, I said “do you think everything is fine?”, he said “yes, everything is perfect”. 600 million pounds spent cannot be perfect, when the fans and owners are not happy it cannot be perfect. I realised we had to change things inside but I couldn’t do it straight away because I was Red and could be seen like ‘oh, he’s coming to change our club’. That is the only thing. At another club I would make these decisions and I did it in the past because it is very clear that is the way to improve, but at Everton I couldn’t do it” explained Benitez.##NAJAVA_MECA_6660754##
