Rafa Benitez has been announced as the new Panathanikos manager and based on Steven Gerrard’s description of his former boss, the Greek club’s players will have to work their socks off to earn his approval.
Former Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez celebrated his 65th birthday this year, but he is certainly not done with football.
The Champions League winner was recently named as the new head coach of Panathanikos, his first managerial role since he was sacked by Celta Vigo in March last year.
What can the players at Panathanikos expect from Benitez? Well according to Steven Gerrard, someone who is provocative and challenging.
The ex-Liverpool captain spoke with Benitez on the Reds Roundtable and detailed what a player must do to earn his approval.
Gerrard said: “He’s a difficult manager to please because he’s obviously very ambitious and his attention to detail, it can be a lot.”
According to Gerrard, Benitez had very different methods compared with Gerard Houllier, the manager who was in charge when he broke into the Liverpool first-team.
“From my own point of view, it goes back a lot further to my youth days if you like,” Gerrard continued. “My mum and dad split when I was 15 years of age. I lived with my mum so that father figure wasn’t there on a daily basis.
“Gerard Houllier took me as I became a first team player and was like a father figure to me on a daily basis because you’re a full-time footballer, so I was used to that different style of love, praise, ‘I’ll look after you’.
“Rafa’s style is different. It’s still the same love and the same respect.”
Gerrard appreciated Benitez’s coaching style, but he revealed how it was more demanding than that of Houllier.
In fact, the Liverpool legend once wrote in his autobiography that he preferred Houllier as a person, but he did not mind working with the much ‘colder’ Benitez.
The relationship between the pair was described by Gerrard as ‘emotionless and distant’, but this gave him the hunger to be complimented by his manager.
As the conversation at the Reds Roundtable continued, Gerrard added: “With stuff off the pitch he was always there 100 per cent, a coach that would provoke you, that would challenge you
“That would, if you scored two, he’d maybe take you off the pitch because he doesn’t want you to be big-headed after the game, he doesn’t want you to have the hat-trick because he’s thinking of the next game.
“I was always trying to find that praise and trying to push for that praise because I wanted that, but it was mainly because of going back, the journey, the house breaking at an important time.”
This demanding coaching strategy clearly worked on Gerrard because he went from strength to strength under Benitez and even captained his team to victory in the 2005 Champions League final.
According to the manager himself, he was only so hard on Gerrard because he believed in him as a player and knew what he was capable of achieving.
Benitez responded: “You do that with people that can give you more. You don’t do that with people when they cannot achieve a certain level, so you have to challenge them, you have to push them because if not, they will not achieve the level.”
During his six year spell at Anfield, Rafa Benitez won the Champions League and UEFA Super Cup in 2005 and the FA Cup a year later.
