Rafa the symptom of what ails blues
All the other unpleasant side effects are familiar, even commonplace — stress, insomnia, paranoia, chronic anxiety, feelings of helplessness, premonitions of certain doom etc – since they more or less come with the territory in the kind of job where, in a matter of months, a man can go from being king of Europe to being told to clear out his desk at four in the morning.
But short-term memory loss is a new one, though its symptoms were unmistakable this week when Rafa Benitez raged, raged against the dying of the light — and then, all smiles, resumed “normal business” the very next day.
Only at Chelsea, eh? And what condition, other than amnesia, could explain Rafa’s apparently sudden aversion to being designated an “interim” manager?
Unless, hearing problems need to be added to his litany of woes – perhaps, he thought they were honouring his track record and referring to him as the “Inter” manager when he accepted that invitation to hop on a plane in Abu Dhabi and rush to London to take over the still warm seat left after the classy wee hours dismissal of Roberto Di Matteo.
But, no, that can’t be the case either because, even though he declined to look too far into the future in his first pressure-cooker press conference at Stamford Bridge, only a month later he was being rather more explicit about his understanding of the terms of his employment when, on being asked by a BBC reporter how he would feel if Roman Abramovich asked him to leave at the end of the season, Benitez replied: “When I decided to come, I knew I was signing a contract for six or seven months, so I was not thinking about more after these seven months.”
“But just don’t call me interim, right?” he forgot to add.
When you come off the ropes swinging wildly the way Rafa did on Wednesday night, there’s always the danger of inadvertently landing a self-inflicted blow.
And, yet, there was something noble, heroic even, about the way he decided to burn his (Stamford) bridge.
Remember teetering-on-the-brink anchorman Howard Beale in ‘Network’?
“All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”
Or, in Rafa’s case, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m only going to take it for a few more months – at most.”
As I recall, it didn’t work too well for old Howie in the long run, though he did enjoy an unexpected spike in the ratings on the back of his desperate death-or-glory rant. Rafa, though, is never going to win a popularity contest in West London. Nor is the old boys ‘network’ at the Bridge suddenly going to start viewing him in a more positive light, now that he’s unleashed the beast within, as it were.
Where is merely another way of stating the obvious — that it’ll all end in tears, sooner rather than later, as it always seems to do at Stamford Bridge. Nine managers and counting – you’d think that the penny would have dropped by now for the boo boys who’ve been making Rafa’s life such a misery in the home dug-out. But no, Benitez will go the same way as all the rest, and the faithful will be left still in thrall to the man who has arguably done more to make Chelsea football club successful and unquestionably done more to ensure that same success is unsustainable.
Yep, it all comes back to all powerful Roman Abramovich, who continues to move in mysterious ways, his wonders and blunders to perform. I look forward to the day when it finally dawns on Chelsea supporters that this is a man who spells rouble with a capital ‘T’ and the banners calling for his removal spring up all over the Bridge. Not that I’ll be holding my breath, of course. It’s much easier to attack the symptom rather than the cause which is why it’ll be Rafa not Roman getting in the teeth again when West Brom come a-calling this afternoon.
Meanwhile, Pep Guardiola is going to Bayern Munich, a wise move by a wise man and, as a reward for knocking out Middlesbrough in the game which played second fiddle to “Rafa’s rant”, Chelsea are going to Old Trafford in the next round of the cup.
Bayern Munich. Manchester United. Chelsea.
Can you spot the odd one out, readers?
