Rafael: being set-up?
Sir Alex Ferguson last night declared open war on Rafael
Benitez with a bizarre and apparently premeditated attack on
the Liverpool
manager.
Ferguson’s salvo came as his Manchester United team — for whom Wayne
Rooney is a major doubt with a foot injury — prepare to take on
Everton in the FA Cup
semi-final at Wembley tomorrow. The Scot lashed out at Benitez for
calling Everton a small club and for a gesture the Liverpool coach
allegedly made to Blackburn
Rovers manager Sam Allardyce last weekend.
Ferguson said: ‘There’s one thing — along with his arrogance
that he showed — that you can’t forgive, and that is his contempt
for Sam Allardyce when Liverpool scored their second goal. Did you
see it? It was absolute contempt. He went like that (gestures with
his arms) as if to say “game finished”. I don’t think Sam Allardyce
deserved that.
Act of war? Rafa Benitez crosses his hands after
Fernando Torres scored Liverpool's second goal against
Blackburn
‘To get that kind of contempt, I don’t think any other
Liverpool manager would ever have done that. But he is beyond the
pale. I think you should respect a manager. I don’t think you’d
ever get me doing something like that. You have to have
humility.
‘I don’t know what he does in his spare time but he’s certainly
not using it in the right way. He has played himself into a
powerful position at Liverpool. He wants control of all the
transfers, why I don’t know, but that’s the last thing I’d want.
Crikey.
And irrespective of what Rafael Benitez says, Everton are a big
club. He called them a small club, which points to his
arrogance.’
Asked yesterday if Allardyce had mentioned the gesture to him
during the week, Ferguson claimed that he had seen it on Match of
the Day.
Benitez is understood to be baffled and amused by Ferguson’s
latest rant. The Liverpool manager is adamant the gesture was a
message to his players and not to Allardyce. Xabi Alonso had
ignored Benitez’s instructions over the free-kick which led to a
goal for Fernando Torres.
Alonso whipped it in from the left, contrary to shouts from the
bench, and when Torres headed home, Benitez grinned sheepishly and
waved his arms as if to say: ‘No more advice from me — what do I
know?’ The TV footage appears inconclusive, and Benitez’s gesture,
delivered with a smile on his face, is ambiguous.
There was no evidence to suggest it was even aimed at Allardyce.
A source close to Benitez said: ‘Rafa has laughed off what is
clearly a co-ordinated attack on him.’
Interestingly, an hour or so before Ferguson’s comments, his
friend Allardyce had also laid into Benitez about the incident.
Allardyce said: ‘What he did was disrespectful and quite
humiliating. He made a gesture that was pretty dismissive to me and
Blackburn Rovers as a whole.
‘He opened out his arms and then waved them as if to say that
was it.
‘It was a gesture that said to me you are finished, done. He
didn’t do it directly at me but it was more or less in my
direction. ‘I waited for a word with Rafa Benitez in his room
afterwards but, as usual, he didn’t turn up.’
Ferguson suggested he will field a slightly weakened team
against Everton — and it may be weaker still if the results of
yesterday’s scan on Rooney’s foot cause concern.
However, the recently reunited defensive partnership of Nemanja
Vidic and Rio Ferdinand is expected to stay together.
