Newcastle's Rafa Benitez opens up on lifelong obsession with football coaching that began when he was THIRTEEN
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Rafa Benitez has revealed his obsession with coaching started when he was just 13 years old.
His junior side had just won the ­Madrid championship, and he compiled notes on his team-mates and academy training sessions.
“I was giving points and marks to our players after every game, writing down the top scorers. I still have everything stacked in my office,” says the Newcastle manager. “When I was 16, I was coach in the summer, and a player. When I was at university – at 17, 18 – I was player, coach, manager, and was playing for Real ­Madrid.”
Notebooks turned to databases.
“I used MS-DOS, then learned Basic, to hold the info.”
He had a Commodore 64.
(Image: Newcastle United/Getty)
(Image: Newcastle United/Getty)
“I have all the training sessions of my players. For instance, my coaches here at Newcastle, Antonio Gomez Perez and Mikel Antia... I saw them play at 16 and now they are 45 and with me. I have them on my computers!”
More than 40 years on, Benitez is still obsessed, consumed by ­football, and teaching his Newcastle players that “little details ­matter”, on a training camp in Spain.
“You’re trying for perfection. You know that it’s impossible, but you try,” he says. “You have to get as much as you can right.”
Benitez has just completed his second year in charge at St James’ Park.
Plenty has gone right — a promotion to the Premier League. A solid 13th so far in a bid to stay in the top flight. The loyal backing of ­Geordie fans, which has kept the club united during a difficult first season back in the elite.
(Image: Newcastle United/Getty)
(Image: Newcastle United/Getty)
Plenty still frustrates — transfer ­windows especially, when money is tight, and decision-making glacial-slow.
So why is Benitez still at Newcastle? What can this multiple trophy winner, and European master, achieve on Tyneside?
He explains: “What my teams usually do is compete, with the chance to win. When I say winning, I don’t mean just games, I mean winning trophies.
“Can we do that? We would need some time, but you never know in the cups.
“I can see the potential for this club to be in the top 10 and even higher. Higher — could be in the top-eight, but not just for one year then finishing 15th for three years in a row. No.
“You have to be in the top 10, then the top eight, then top seven, six. To do that you need a structure. You have to have the basement ready and then you have to build on that.”
(Image: Newcastle United/Getty)
(Image: Newcastle United/Getty)
Whether owner Mike Ashley is ­prepared to help the 57-year-old Spaniard do that ­remains to be seen, but he wants ­freedom to keep making changes. He is Toon’s best, probably only, chance of ­stability.
Benitez added: “I feel this ­support and I feel this responsibility that I have to do well, every single decision I try to analyse carefully.
“We have to keep the team in the ­Premier League and build again. When I see a lot of fans behind me supporting me, I am really proud of that, and feel the responsibility. I am happy with that.
“You try to change 20 per cent, 30 per cent, hopefully next year will be another 20 per cent, another 50 per cent. I came here with the idea to compete and to create a strong team and a strong club, to compete every year. If we stay up, the idea is to improve.
“The way Newcastle United were doing things doesn’t mean they were right, ­because they were going down. We ­cannot make the same mistakes.
(Image: Serena Taylor)
“We have been working for these two years and we know each other much ­better. We have more options to send the right message across and to do things better. I think we will have more chances to attract better players. At some clubs you know that the fans do not care or that they are against you, it’s not the same passion, the same feeling.
“Here, I know that a lot of fans trust me and they have confidence that we can do well. To compete and be capable of ­winning something, you need to be stronger, you have to have the plan. The process, everything, has to be clearer.
“I am pleased with this job. I enjoy it when I watched our second goal against Southampton, and you see the players doing the thing you’ve talked about.
“The club has to keep learning.”
BENITEZ ON... HIS GRUELLING NEWCASTLE WORK-DAY
Rafa Benitez has revealed he spends more than 12 hours a day planning Newcastle’s survival battle.
Explaining his typical day, the former Liverpool and Real Madrid boss said: “I get in early in the morning – between 7.30am and 8.30am. Not just me, my staff. Sometimes I leave at 8pm. We train, we have lunch, we talk, we watch videos. Talking with players, talking with the staff.
“If we can enjoy it, we try to enjoy it.
(Image: Newcastle United/Getty)
(Image: Newcastle United/Getty)
“I have the big screen in the office so I like to stay there when I am preparing for games because it’s easier. If you go home, you have just a computer.
“My staff will see three of four games of whoever it is we are playing. Our analysts prepare the report. They give 90 minutes of clips and Antonio Gomez (coach) will reduce it to maybe 35-45 minutes.
“Then I reduce it to around 12-15 minutes to give the players exactly what they need to know about the opponents — you make sure they can see counter-attacks, set-pieces, goals.
“So for every 15-minute clip they watch, me and the staff have watched hours . We prepare clips for every player, for the defenders or the strikers. We are working every single day just to try to improve by one per cent.”
BENITEZ ON... BEING SECOND-GUESSED BY HIS OWN FAMILY
The Newcastle manager says his greatest escape is his family – and admits that his daughters love giving him advice.
Benitez says wife Maria keeps her opinions on Newcastle’s progress to herself but daughters Claudia and Agata, aged 19 and 15, are not backward in coming forward.
(Image: Action Images via Reuters)
“My wife does not give too much football advice,” said the 57-year-old, “but my daughter is always saying ‘Why did you do this?’ Or ‘You have to do this, you have to change this player.’ Everybody has their favourites!
“I am older than my players so it’s good that my daughters are 19 and 15. They know this environment, social network, Instagram, Snapchat, how they communicate.
“They know more or less the trends. I keep in touch through them. You know that the players, once they sit down at a table, are sending messages and talking between themselves.”
BENITEZ ON... SEEING AND HEARING IF SOMEONE CAN PLAY
Though he uses the mountains of data available to clubs these days, Rafa Benitez still wants to hear the thud of boot on ball to assess players.
(Image: Newcastle United/Getty)
He revealed: “One thing I don’t want to do - and it’s a key thing - is lose the feeling. The feeling. It’s not just what the data is telling you. It’s the feeling.
“Because I was playing football, I know how you feel when you make a mistake.
“Like a lot of professionals, I can hear when you are kicking the ball properly or not (he smacks his hands together), just by the sound. I like to see players. You can’t lose the human touch.”