Benitez the Stalker

By: Rob | April 27th, 2008

Rafa Winking (at Drogba?) You would think, after 19 matches against Chelsea, Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez would know Wednesday nights opposition very well. Not, apparently well enough. It seems that the Spanish coach is stalking Chelsea striker Didier Drogba saying that
“every time I collect little clips of [Drogba]“

Apparently Rafa was just trying to say that Drogba gets a bit theatrical and because of his huge size often gets the benifit of the doubt. Well, we all know he goes down a bit easy at times (though, I can’t be the only one who thinks its a wee bit hypocritical for Rafa to mention it considering he’s built a team around Steven Gerrard and ‘Nando Torres, the latters theatrics effectively ending The Matrix’s Champions League season) but apparently Benitez sat down and watched video’s of the Ivory Coast hitman in all of the games against Liverpool, and has noted that he often gets the benifit of the doubt from referee’s.

I can’t be the only one who now has a mental imagine of a slightly mad Rafa, sat in his basement cackling crazily about bad refereeing descions in games from years ago. I mean, it does strike me as a little obsessive to collect together all the clips of Drogba and then watch them all the vindicate your own feelings.

But that is, it seems what Rafa has done:
“With Drogba, it’s important to have a good referee. You can’t do anything, but I will say it because it was so clear. He is amazing because he is massive.
It’s very impressive. I have a lot of clips of him from over the years and he surprises me –
We’ve played against Chelsea 19 games and every time I have collected some clips of Drogba – I have shown them to some of the players. I think that (Martin) Skrtel and Carra (Jamie Carragher) were really good against him the other day, the only problem was the referee was giving fouls. And it was not the same with (Fernando) Torres.”

Other than the fact that Torres is as much a diver as Drogba, It does seem a strange way to approach the build up to a game. Perhaps he is trying to influence the ref in advance? Who knows. If he said this after a game, surely he would get a slap on the wrists for having a go at the man (who is sometimes) in black. All I can say is that I hope he never gets videos of me playing and analyses them while stroking his goatee. Makes me uncomfortable at just the thought.