saw the Partenopei miss out on Champions
League football, but in truth they scarcely deserved
it
By Kris Voakes | International Football
Correspondent
He is still loved in Liverpool and his achievements
at Chelsea are begrudgingly praised by most of a
blue persuasion. Add in his extraordinary
successes with Valencia and Rafael Benitez should
appear to be a reasonable candidate for the Real
Madrid role he is about to take up.
But on Sunday he prepared for his introduction at
the Santiago Bernabeu with a second Serie A
failure. With Inter in 2010-11 he collected two
trophies but tore the life out of the Nerazzurri’s
treble-winning side. And now he has ended his
two-year reign at Napoli with a fifth-place finish
when Champions League football should have been
a near-certainty.
On another night, he might have got away with it.
Needing a victory against Lazio to overtake Stefano
Pioli’s side and finish in the prized third place, his
team came from 2-0 down to draw level and then
found themselves awarded a 77th-minute penalty.
Gonzalo Higuain’s dreadful miss from 12 yards
was not Benitez’s fault per se, but the striker had
bailed out his boss in the first place with the two
goals that had pulled the Partenopei out of a hole.
Ogenyi Onazi and Miroslav Klose’s late strikes
rubbed salt in the wounds and returned the one-
sided look to the scoreline which for large parts
the match deserved.
The 4-2 loss typified Benitez’s coaching record of
recent years. There was no convincing structure
about his side, then he appeared to be heading for
an unlikely success after hurriedly throwing Plan B
into action, but ultimately he and his side just
weren’t good enough.
Only when Lazio were reduced to 10 men did
Napoli not look likely to concede at almost any
moment, and once Faouzi Ghoulam had followed
Marco Parolo into the dressing rooms the naive
defending that has been on display all season was
once again apparent.
Lazio have deserved Champions League
more than Napoli have, and Benitez rightly finishes
short of the mark as he leaves the peninsula. He
won a Coppa Italia and a Supercoppa Italiana but
ultimately failed to achieve what he was employed
to do.
Poor fortune saw his side leave the Champions
League at the group stage despite racking up 12
points in 2013-14, but the play-off exit against
Athletic Bilbao this time around and an inability to
send the Azzurri back to the competition next
season mean he will rightly be considered a failure
in Italy.
Napoli are not Real Madrid. They do not have the
Spaniards’ resources, they don’t have their
players, and they don’t have their winning
mentality. Higuain’s penalty miss – his fourth of
the season – also helped to underline the kind of
big-game bottle which saw him discarded by
Madrid two years ago.
But Benitez needs to show that he can be a better
decision-maker when the chips are down. He has
done little to improve Napoli’s abysmal defence,
and has continued to play Christian Maggio – an
excellent wing-back and accomplished right
midfielder – as a right-back even when constantly
showing himself to be short of the defensive nous.
He has also backed poor goalkeepers to buck long
downward trends, while the structure of his team
has been lacking even against some of the
country’s minnows.
While opposite number Stefano Pioli deserves
every bit of credit coming his way for the job he
has done at Lazio, Benitez has taken Napoli
backwards since taking the reins at San Paolo.
And now he is off to Real Madrid by way of
reward.
He heads to the Santiago Bernabeu with more to
prove than ever before.
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