The truth behind Rafa's exit.

Rafa Benitez, a manger who is still idolized by most of the liverpool faithful left LFC last summer. After a disastrous season, not qualifying for the champions league and loosing the support of the senior players, an exit was on the cards. However, it still was something most fans could not comprehend. The memories of Istanbul were still fresh, the European masterclass of Rafa was evident(ask Real Madrid), they were completely in shock.

Now as Roy Hodgson has taken over, a big segment of the fans are still missing Rafa. So I have decieded to have a look back and have identified the real factor behind departure. Which uptil now had gone unnoticed.

Do you remember when it all started? the mess I mean. It started with Rafa having a bust up with Xabi Alonso, it was all over the press. Rafa left him out of the trip away to Inter in the UCL. Well the writing was on the wall. Things between them never improved from then on. Wait a minute, this was just one incident. What really went wrong behind the scenes?

What really changed was the Homegrown Players rule, that was the biggest nail in Rafas coffin. Being a master of getting good european players and playing the european way he had a big challenge, suddenly to change his squad for the up coming seasons and trimming the foriegn players he had.

If you notice carefully, Rafa wanted to ditch Xabi for Barry and this saga left a serious dent on Rafas image inside the liverpool camp but  Rafas motive was only to prepare for the Homegrown rule. Moving on, Look at Rafas next moves. Rafa knew he could spend 6-7m on a european right back, but he had to go for Glenn Johnson who is English. Who again costed Rafa too much money and Rafa could not have money for the much needed striker.

He again went for players who could have a more British history about them he went for Keane. Rather than his much more adored spanish talents coming up, his interest in Silva was much publicized but he could not go for him bearing in mind the Requirement of English players.

I only think of the fact if this rule had not been introduced, Rafa would still be bring in world class spanish talents like Torres, Reina, Alonso, Arbeloa, Reira, and south americans like Mascherano, Maxi.

This rule forced Rafa to loose his competitve advantage over his rivals which was his Basque roots. He wanted to go for English Players which have always been expensive and over priced.

Rafa wanted players like, Silva, Villa, Augureo, Mata, but the rules of the game were changing, he found himself in foriegn land, no longer could he pull  rabbit out of the hat with a limited budget as England was not his playing ground when it came to scouting networks.

Its a shame , we all still miss Rafa, knowing and accepting his mistakes. I disagreed with him in many things, but still he was the one who made us dream. I know that if he was allowed to shop abroad, things would have been very different.

However in the end I only wanted to say " In Rafa we trusted"