Napoli’s Rafa Benítez has his eyes on another final in Europa League
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Version 0 of 1. You have to feel sorry for any club who have Rafael Benítez as their manager, goes the old joke, it must cost a fortune to travel all over Europe to those finals. The joke has a point. There was the triumphant 2004 Uefa Cup final during his time at Valencia. After that, there were the two Champions League finals during his six seasons at Liverpool, evenly split between victory and defeat. And during those six months at Chelsea, despite the opprobrium of the fans, he led the club to their first success in the Europa League. Throw in another two Champions League semi-finals at Liverpool, as well as an impending one in the Europa League with Napoli, and it is easy to see why those travel bills tot up and Benítez does not struggle for work. The Spaniard faces the seventh European semi-final of his career when Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk arrive at the Stadio San Paolo on Thursday for the first leg of their Europa League tie. “Obviously I’m really pleased with this record and it is because I have had good players and a very good staff helping me to be there,” Benítez says. “You can’t achieve these things without the right tools. Hard work, having good people around you and confidence in our ability have been always very helpful.” A refusal to look too far ahead, an ability to retain focus amid frenzied expectation of clubs desperate for European success, also counts. Benítez will become only the second manager to win the Europa League/Uefa Cup three times should he lead Napoli to victory in Warsaw on 27 May (Giovanni Trapattoni being the other) and the first to do so with three different clubs. Talk of the hat-trick serving as a personal motivation, he insists, is indecently premature. “I can’t answer that question yet,” he says. “We have a difficult semi-final to play. I’m really motivated, but we still have a long way to go.” Benítez is similarly circumspect on the growing belief in Naples that a 26-year wait for a second European trophy is approaching its end. The club’s last, only, triumph in Europe came in 1989 when a forward line of Diego Maradona, Careca and Andrea Carnevale led Napoli to a 5-4 aggregate defeat of Stuttgart in the Uefa Cup final. They have won the Coppa Italia and Italian Super Cup since the Spaniard replaced Walter Mazzarri in 2013 but the prospect of Europa League success, with the added luxury of passage into next season’s Champions League, is intoxicating by comparison. Their coach admits: “My relationship with the fans and the people working in the club is very good but before talking about a trophy we have to win it. So, let us reach the final and we will be closer.” Dnipro have managed one away win in their last 10 European games, a win that came against FK Qarabag back in the group stages. If the thought of playing the first leg in the Stadio San Paolo against the speed, skills and menace of players such as José Callejón, Marek Hamsik and Gonzalo Higuaín (“by far the best player in Serie A,” according to Zvonimir Boban) does not have them digging with their knees asking a higher power for help, then Benítez’s home record should. He has not been beaten in his last 24 home games in Uefa competition. The last time? A 2-1 defeat against Fiorentina with Liverpool in December 2009. Though in forgiving form in the league (where they have the worse defensive record of the top nines sides) Dnipro are unlikely to get any help from the Italians’ back four and their keeper, who are conceding just 0.58 goals per game in Europe. Up front, no other club has scored as many in this competition as Napoli’s 25. “The key for winning trophies is the balance between attack and defence,” Benítez says. “If you score a lot of goals that is good but at the same time you have to defend well. Gonzalo [Higuaín] is a key player for us. If he is in form the team normally plays well. His movements, his quality and his approach are really important for the rest of the team. If he is doing well, we can win against any team.” Not for the first time, Europe has offered the Spaniard respite from inconsistency in the league. Too much rotation and an inability to put smaller sides to the sword were among the criticisms in England and not much has changed in Serie A. In Benítez’s first season in charge of Napoli, he led them to third place but they finished eight points behind second-placed Roma and 24 behind the champions Juventus. The former won 15 games against the lower half of the table, the latter won all 20; Napoli won just 11. This season has shown little improvement. Juventus have already claimed the scudetto and Roma are in second place (albeit by fewer points). The nadir of this campaign for Napoli came with a 1-0 defeat away to Roma in early April. It was the first time that an inconsistent giallorossi had won at home since November and it capped a run of five league games that meant Napoli picked up just two points and slipped from third to sixth in the league. That was followed by a Coppa Italia semi-final exit at the hands of Lazio and the threat from the club president, Aurelio De Laurentiis, of a training camp “for an unlimited period of time”. Before a crucial week in which they would take on Fiorentina in Serie A and Wolfsburg in the Europa League, De Laurentiis made good with his threat to impose a media blackout that, with the exception of Uefa requirements, continues. “I hope all of this will serve as a turning point to spark some pride,” he said. “We have put in some squalid performances that are unworthy of Napoli. From today we change tack. We need a training session for the mind, more respect for the fans, the club, the coach and for themselves.” The hotel they were sent to reportedly had no hot water and no kitchen. Some players survived on takeaways. Since entering (and subsequently exiting) the retreat, Napoli have played seven games in all competitions and won five. Along the way, they have scored 17 goals. Quite the turnaround, a turnaround that mirrored the talk turning around Benítez. After that five-game fallow period and the Lazio loss there was veiled (and unveiled) criticism from De Laurentiis and whispers that the Spaniard would not be there next season but that Luciano Spalletti would. Now there is open talk of a contract extension for Benítez, who has been linked with a return to the Premier League and, only on Saturday, reappeared at his old club Liverpool in the form of a banner on the back of a plane that read “Rodgers Out Rafa In”. Four of Napoli’s five transformative wins have come in Serie A but the most eye-catching and arguably job-saving came in Europe against Wolfsburg on their manager’s 55th birthday. The side second in the Bundesliga, the side who had lost just one home match all season, were ripped to shreds in front of their own fans. Wolfsburg reclaimed some self-respect by coming back from 2-0 down with 20 minutes of the second leg left (to claim a draw) but at that stage of the tie, Napoli were 6-1 up on aggregate and knew the club’s first European semi-final since 1989 was upon them. But, as Benítez insists, the job is not complete. He adds: “We have [Ivan] Strinic in our squad now. He was playing for Dnipro [until December, so is ineligible for Napoli] and he says they are a good team, with experience and good players. Some people think it will be easy – no chance. At this stage of the competition it will be a very difficult game. It is so important for both teams that it will be decided in the second game.” Benítez’s words are warm and wary but in his head he must know that he has the talent and tactical experience to deny Dnipro a place in the final and increase his side’s chances of making the Champions League next season. And in their heads, Napoli’s fans should have known to book those flights to Warsaw a long time ago. This blog has been corrected since first being published |