Real Madrid 0 Liverpool FC 1: Tony Barrett's verdict
Feb 26 2009 by Tony Barrett, Liverpool Echo
FIRST it was the Nou Camp, then the San Siro and now even the mighty Bernabeu has fallen to Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool.
Three cathedrals of European football, three of the toughest places for any team to win and yet all of them have found to their cost that when it comes to continental conquest the Spanish manager has few peers.
That’s the very same Benitez who spent most of yesterday trying to avoid having to answer ridiculous questions about his future following what can only be described as a disgusting and poisonous whispering campaign.
The build-up to Liverpool’s match with Real should have been dominated by talk of two of Europe’s genuine super powers finally going head to head in a two-legged affair.
It should have featured no little conversation about whether Steven Gerrard would be fit to take on the La Liga giants and how Fernando Torres would figure in a stadium where he has never scored.
Instead, the plazas of Madrid jangled to the sound of unsubstantiated rumour as mobile phones buzzed with text messages from home carrying “news” that the Liverpool manager’s days were numbered because a bookmaker had decided to suspend betting on his future.
Even by Liverpool’s recent standards, such mutterings marked a new low and provided proof if it were needed that cavernous divisions within the club are now being exploited by any scaremonger with an overactive imagination and mischief on their mind.
Make no mistake about it, the Anfield club’s name has been dragged through the gutter in the last 24 hours with wild and often scurrilous speculation suggesting that youth team players, first teamers and even club legends had all revealed that Benitez was on his way out.
This is what Liverpool have come to, but the most worrying aspect of all is that there could still be worse to come because there are no signs of divisions being healed, no indication that anyone in the club’s hierarchy has the inclination to lead the club out of one of the most troubled periods in its history.
Surely now enough is enough and the time has come for messrs Hicks, Gillett, Parry and Benitez to sort out their problems once and for all before the club is derailed altogether.
Somehow, the Liverpool team – that’s the players who the supporters pay to watch and who should be the only topic of conversation – managed to rise above the rancour and produce a performance which will rank alongside any in the Reds’ magnificent European history.
As was the case when Benitez’s side outmanoeuvred and out thought Inter Milan last season, they will today be damned with faint praise.
The prevailing school of thought in some quarters will be that Real failed to deliver when it mattered most after their imperious domestic form had made them favourites to reach the last eight in the eyes of many.
It is an argument which should not be dismissed because the nine times European champions did not perform like a side which had set pulses racing by notching up a 6-1 lead by half time in its most recent fixture.
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