Rafa Benitez and Real Madrid can work but success is not guaranteed

Posted Thursday, June 04, 2015 by ESPN

"There may be trouble ahead, but while there's moonlight, and music and love and romance, let's face the music and dance"

It's not just that Saturday's Champions League final will be played in the German capital, which brings Irving Berlin's most famous line to mind. It is also apt to Rafael Benitez taking over as Real Madrid manager.

As the honeymoon starts, when better for the merest hint of love and romance?

But there's trouble ahead -- you can bank on it. Of what variety and for whom? Those are the key questions,

For a number of reasons, hiring the outgoing Napoli coach makes perfect sense for Madrid president Florentino Perez. He doesn't have a footballing philosophy worth a damn, and so the most predictable thing in the world was that the managerial pendulum would swing again.

What do I mean by that? Well, in 2009 Manuel Pellegrini was the first coach of Perez's "second era" at the Bernabeu.

Pellegrini isn't one to have a high media profile. He tries to establish a collegiate atmosphere of trust and "mutual benefit" around his squad and staff and is largely seen as one of football's less authoritarian coaches. He's intense and ambitious but no martinet.

When Perez judged the Chilean to have failed after one season, the pendulum swung to Jose Mourinho, who was authoritarian, a media manipulator, abrasive, controversial, ruthless and driven by waging war on Barcelona.

That appointment ultimately divided Madrid's squad, causing open dislike and mutual resentment between Pepe and Mourinho, and Cristiano Ronaldo and Mourinho. When the club ended 2012-13 season without a trophy, the Portuguese was shown the door marked "Salida."

Thus, the pendulum swung again, back to affability, a collegiate atmosphere and the "I'm alright, you're alright" school of coaching, to the well-liked and consensus-driven Carlo Ancelotti. Demanding and ambitious? Yes. Prone to challenging the established order within the club? No.

Rafa Benitez and Real Madrid can work but success is not guaranteed
Rafa Benitez and Florentino Perez are all smiles now, but will the good feeling last?

And so here are Madrid today, back to the authoritarian, control-every-detail style of a manager. Benitez might be permanently at daggers-drawn with Mourinho but resembles him in his own intensity, what he demands strategically and tactically and in how he manages his media relations.

What's more, some of the things at which Benitez is exceptional are precisely what Los Blancos lacked this season.

The rotation of the playing resources was injudicious, the positional anomalies of Ronaldo ,Gareth Bale and Toni Kroos were never properly addressed, and the season's end proved there was a wafer-thin lack of the mental and physical intensity at training on a daily basis that set apart Barcelona.

These are things in which Benitez has real expertise. Not only is his attention to detail legendary, so is what he demands of players.

For example, when Chelsea won the 2012-13 Europa League under his tutelage, the final vs. Benfica was the club's 47th game in 171 days -- that's one every 3۽ days for almost half a year.

The squad was rotated with intelligence and risk-management to a degree that was immensely successful. His team won a European trophy and finished third, which gave the returning Mourinho a platform from which they reached the Champions League semifinal the following season.

When I first interviewed Benitez back in 2003, he was still in the process of making Valencia an enormously good side that won La Liga twice, and he explained something that remains of core value to him.

While out of work in the 1990s, he went to England, where he was allowed by Sir Alex Ferguson to study Manchester United training.

What obsessed Benitez, he revealed, was how to get his players to perform with the intensity, hunger and sporting aggression he believed was the single biggest advantage of the British game.

Although what he was told by everyone at United was that it was simply an innate characteristic of being British, Benitez sought to replicate that at Valencia -- and succeeded.

Under him, Los Che became brilliant at pressing, defensively aggressive, athletic, hungry and obsessed by winning every mini-battle across the pitch in every game.

When he took over at Liverpool in 2004, Benitez worked so hard and so long into the night that, one evening, he was startled to find himself driving home in the dark on the wrong side of the road. He was so absorbed in his thoughts and so tired that he'd taken to the Spanish right side even though he was in England.

Later, when Fernando Torres was breaking Anfield records, the striker would explain that not only was the rest of the team set up to "feed" him, but that he was explicitly told by Benitez not to hunt for the ball unless it was directly in his immediate environment.

Benitez would instruct Torres about the most minimal positional choices -- centimetres here and there -- about how he angled his body for picking up a pass and in which area of the pitch to find space while waiting for possession to be fed to him.

Calibration of the most minute details.

Rafa Benitez and Real Madrid can work but success is not guaranteed
Benitez managed David Luiz during the manager's six-month stay at Chelsea.

David Luiz is another case in point. If the Brazilian earned a ludicrous sum of money -- 50 million -- for Mourinho's Chelsea when he signed for Paris Saint-Germain in 2014, it was partly because his time under Benitez at Stamford Bridge was the most organised, disciplined and reliable of Luiz's career in England.

"He's one of the best in the world, because he has everything," Benitez said of him. "You just have to manage him properly; I could explain exactly what I wanted, and tactically he is very clever. He needs just the people who can give him the ideas and the instructions of what to do and then he will do them"

Luiz said of his one-time manager: "Rafa helped me a lot; I love the philosophy he gave to the Chelsea players. He changed my game and helped a lot. He sees football like me."

Benitez would have a map of London's football stadia on the wall of his office so that he could calibrate journey times from Chelsea's southern, suburban training ground in Cobham. Instead of delegating to a general manager or a transport controller, he would want control of decisions like this to ensure efficiency and no errors -- a 100 percent winning mentality.

These are examples of what Madrid are getting with the man who began learning his trade in their youth system while running a city-centre gymnasium over 20 years ago.

Apply them to the current situation at the Bernabeu and Valdebebas training ground and the conclusion can be positive for the club.

Raphael Varane has recently showed a tendency to choose his position poorly, a slight complacency that his enormous pace can get him out of. It's a common flaw; quick players often rely on pace as opposed to reading the game or original decision-making.

Likewise, tall players, who've always been able to get to a header first because of physical attributes, don't learn the art of timing that benefit others because they practice.

If Varane pays attention, Benitez can make him a truly exceptional defender.

Meanwhile, Sergio Ramos appeared to be critical of Madrid hiring Benitez, though that was likely more out of affection for the sacked Ancelotti.

However, the defender and his new manager are not guaranteed to see eye to eye. Ramos loves the buccaneer side of his game. He's an Andaluz -- the swagger of the show is in him. Benitez will demand tighter, shrewder decision-making.

If sparks fly, then either Ramos will be moving toward the Premier League or he'll end up a cleverer defender who reads the game better. What a story to watch developing

Then there is the goalkeeping situation. With respect to Manchester United and their fans, it's now clearly established that Real Madrid not only want David De Gea, it seems as if the player is also keen.

Let's hypothesise the deal is done. What would "Regime Rafa" hold for either of them? Perhaps this will encourage Casillas and deter De Gea, but Benitez has a long established habit of rotating his keepers.

It's a general trend in continental football -- the best examples were Real Madrid last season with Casillas and Diego Lopez, and Barcelona with Claudio Bravo and Marc-Andre ter Stegen this season -- that the "principal" keeper will play all the league games (often Europe, too) and the "backup" will see time in the Copa del Rey.

Benitez doesn't work that way. His tendency is that there's no guaranteed pecking order and that goalkeepers will be rested, rotated and dropped as is seen fit by the manager.

Given that, might De Gea feel that life at United, with a European Championship for Spain to defend in 12 months, might offer more game time? Likewise, might Casillas think: "I'll be given chances, and so I'll take my chances rather than leave."

Rafa Benitez and Real Madrid can work but success is not guaranteed
Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo are set to work under another manager at the Bernabeu after Benitez replaced Carlo Ancelotti.

Then there is the Bale-Ronaldo situation. The Welshman is playing in a position that suited Madrid's needs in 2013-14 but that now doesn't suit neither him nor the team.

If Benitez continues to favour a 4-2-3-1 formation, it's easy to see, in his mind's eye, an outfield lineup of being Danilo, Ramos/Pepe, Varane, Marcelo; Kroos, Luka Modric; James, Benzema/Isco, Bale; Ronaldo.

In this alignment, Bale would be returned to the left and Ronaldo would become the centre-forward.

That line -- "There may be trouble ahead" -- also applies to anticipation that Benitez and the Portuguese superstar won't get on and there certainly might be sparks, just as there were between Lionel Messi and Luis Enrique in January.

But look how that worked out for Barcelona.

Benitez is often thought of as high maintenance, ruthless, demanding and tiring: "If you're not with me 1,000 percent, you're against me" -- that sort of thing.

But he's shrewd, football intelligent and very ambitious, and it's not beyond imagination that he sells rotation and repositioning to Ronaldo in such a way that it becomes either attractive or simply acceptable.

Imagine the conversation: "I'll put Bale on the left of the three and you at centre-forward; he'll have to cross and pass to you because he won't be cutting in and shooting all the time.

"My system will allow you to miss certain games and, thus, be better able to avoid debacles like the Copa del Rey defeat to Atletico Madrid and the Champions League elimination vs. Juventus!

"Stick with my methods and you'll play slightly less, but you'll win more and you'll be able to compete with Messi for the Ballon D'Or."

On the other hand, perhaps Benitez and Ronaldo will be like cat and dog and neither will cede his "I'm in charge around here" attitude. But they are both professional and dedicated to winning so there is, at least, a chance that the two men will combine for an unlikely but effective alliance.

Benitez has lost some significant lieutenants along the way -- some of whom are neither his friend nor confidante anymore -- and has fought memorable battles with players such as John Terry, fellow managers such as Ferguson and Mourinho and the media.

This is a man who will want more and more control, whether it pertains to the Madrid youth system, transfers in and out, travel planning and summer tour venues and whether there's sorbet or raspberry ripple ice cream on the menu in the players' canteen.

When Benitez gets to grips with how things work at Madrid, there are bound to be sparks. He will, for example, experience the presidential "will" that a player is moved out or played less so that he feels it's time to move or brought in because it'll help the profile of the club or Florentino's construction company somewhere in the world.

But the honeymoon has begun, and that's when there's moonlight and music and love and romance. Watching Benitez and his squad judge who is in time and who is out of step, that's going to be fun.