Benitez has lots to prove. 1389

Les Corbett

no, mistake imo.

easy to say of course, it could have set further panic into the team in the sense that both LFC and ACM would seize on the idea that LFC were failing, but fair point.

He has to be cos he takes the rap when it all goes pear shaped, however the man is in his honey moon, more so now, so lay off ;-)

You tell me.

Nothing wrong with making mistakes, at least RB could correct his and succeed, nothing Ancelloti did worked, who is the better?

Fine and that's some of what RB will have used during his HT efforts. ACM DO ship goals, have been of late and of course whatever tactical changes were made RB still had to inspire hs players with the belief and will to not only win but to want to win or at least rekindle the wilting desire. Have you met or even heard of anyone who thought we could come back from HT? I haven't and I keeop asking people. Job well done imo. You need plenty of luck to win these high level competitons, I dount that any CL winning side has not had their fair share along the way.

further.

also-

"Rafael Ben’tezÕs tactics were so out of character and against his own instincts that I was reminded of what happened to the England rugby team when Will Carling was captain in the 1991 World Cup. Then they stuck to their tried and tested tactics all the way through to the final, but a combination of a media onslaught and Australian psychology spooked them into a change of approach. Australia won and England have regretted it ever since.

Here the questions raced between us. Why has Ben’tez done this today of all days? Why didnÕt he change the shape when Harry Kewell was injured and had to leave the field? As Mark Lawrenson said before kick-off: ÒIf they win, heÕs a tactical genius; if they lose, heÕs a clot.Ó

Ben’tez had 45 minutes to save himself from being portrayed as MerseysideÕs answer to Claudio Ranieri. Even then, after the second-half comeback, he needed a shade of fortune. Jerzy Dudek made a fine save from Andriy Shevchenko and although the PoleÕs block of the rebound was instinctive it was also involuntary. The angle of the ball arcing up into the sky tells you it hit him on the top of the wrist. A couple of inches higher and Milan win the European Cup, Ben’tez is crucified and Steven Gerrard is off in the summer. Football at this level hinges on such minuscule margins."

Finally-

Hugh McIlvanney: After the hyperbole, the reality The voice of sport

It was an amazing, unforgettable night, and nothing could be more natural than the engulfing of perspective in the firestorm of superlatives provoked by LiverpoolÕs midweek achievement in Istanbul. Getting carried away over the unimaginably melodramatic comeback that brought the European championship to Anfield for the fifth time was not merely forgivable but obligatory. Through a magnificent show of defiant spirit, Rafael Benitez and his men enabled the club and the hundreds of thousands who are not so much supporters as a religious congregation to revel again in their unchallengeable status as the setters of the English gameÕs standards of accomplishment abroad. The party that is presumably still reverberating beerily across Merseyside is fully justified. But perhaps now, at a calming distance of several days, the rest of the nation is ready for a throttling down of the hyperbole about what happened in the Ataturk stadium. There was an almost biblical sweep to some of the claims made for the 2005 Champions League final as the greatest this and the greatest that. LiverpoolÕs competitive resurrection was credited with turning it into a triumph for footballÕs most romantic values.

All that is fair enough, up to a point. However, I am nagged by a question. How would the event have been reported in this country if its patterns and performances had been precisely reversed Ñ if Liverpool had ripped Milan apart in the first half, scored three unanswered goals and taken the opposition to the brink of humiliation before becoming intoxicated with complacency at the interval, surrendering their lead to continuing to be conspicuously the more threatening team, sliding to defeat in the lottery of a penalty shoot-out?

If Liverpool had experienced the match exactly as Milan did, would there have been the same journalistic enthusiasm in these parts for hailing the Istanbul occasion as one of the more glorious European finals? Would we have found as many column inches and hours of airtime devoted to telling us that a contest shaped and intensified by such a historic fight-back had to be ranked high in the annals of sport, let alone football? Somehow I doubt it. My confident guess is that many in our media would have concentrated on savaging the losers as the wimps who threw away what should have been an unbuttailable lead. The match might have been portrayed not as a parable of the power of self-belief but as a shambles of disintegration.

Of course, my role-reversal fantasy would impose impossible demands on the most vivid imagination, since nobody could ever visualise the present Liverpool attacking with the swift fluency and penetrative zest WednesdayÕs opponents produced to devastating effect in the first 45 minutes. And it would be just about as difficult to buttociate todayÕs Milan with the kind of resolute, unified will responsible for LiverpoolÕs escape from a predicament that had London bookmakers offering them at 100-1 during the interval. MilanÕs double susceptibility to outbreaks of defensive disorganisation and a cracking of collective morale had been thoroughly exp-osed in the 2004 Champions League quarter-finals when they carried a 4-1 lead to La Coru–a and managed to lose 4-0 to Deportivo in the second leg. In their semi-final this year they went from comfortable control against PSV Eindhoven to hanging on for survival. They can look like a great team (as they did for three-quarters of an hour in Turkey) but they are nowhere close to being the full article. Clearly Wednesday nightÕs action, for all its plot-twists and the exhilaration of its improbable outcome, involved two seriously flawed teams. The weaknesses of BenitezÕs resources, and the freakishness of the success he has enjoyed in Europe, are underlined by the universal acknowledgment that the manager will soon be effecting a clear-out of unwanted players. Patently, his main concern will be to keep Steven Gerrard, whose galvanising example was crucial in the miracle of Istanbul, once the extraordinarily belated introduction of Dietmar Hamann as a half-time substitute had freed the captain to function in the advanced, surging role that suits him best. But the stalwart influence of Gerrard, Jamie Carragher, Xabi Alonso, John Arne Riise and Ham-ann (if he stays) will have to be significantly reinforced to make likely the required improvement in the Premiership, where Liverpool Õs points total was much closer to that of the basement club than of Chelsea.

Earning permanent custody of a Champions League trophy must be a psychological lift but as a widely applicable form-guide that competition has become fairly meaningless. It has been debased beyond recognition by mercenary manipulation of its structure and especially by the accommodation of a ludicrous volume of contenders from the major nations participating. Liverpool can take pride in triumphing in a big cup tournament but, in their wildest dreams, they canÕt see themselves as the best team in Europe. On the issue of whether they should defend their crown, I think that should be the right of all winners of the World Cup and European championships at national and club level. Yet I shudder at the lunacy of having five ent-ries from one country (in this case England) in the Champions League. Uefa should change their rules to permit title defences. But first they ought to alter the name of their flagship competition. It is a bad joke. "

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