Exclusive: Ex-Chelsea Manager Rafa Benitez on How to Win Champions League Final

On the eve of tomorrow night's Champions League final, Jurgen Klopp and Jupp Heynckes could do worse than put in a call to Rafa Benitez.

The departing Chelsea manager certainly knows how to win a European final.

A Champions League winner with Liverpool in 2005, last week he added another Europa League with Chelsea to add to the one he first captured with Valencia back in 2004.

“It is all about the research you do before the final,” the Spaniard told me, “You really have to do your homework.

“Before the 2005 Champions League final, we had a very good idea about where each Milan player would put their penalty in a shootout because we had made the effort to find out where every one of them had put their last six penalties.

“This took a lot of work going back many years as most players don’t take that many penalties.

“To help our goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek we divided the goal up in to six areas, one for top right corner, two for high down the middle, three for top-left corner and so on.

“So we briefed Jerzy on which area each player would likely shoot into, and gave him a number so he could easily remember, which ultimately helped him save Andrea Pirlo and Andrei Schevchenko’s penalties in the shootout.”  

Benitez has accumulated a huge library of DVDs and notepads, which cover almost every game and most of the training sessions he has taken charge of during his career, as well as those covering most of the leading teams in Europe. 

“I keep 100s of DVDs in my office and at home, and they go right back to when I coached Real Madrid’s youth team. This is my greatest resource.

“When I learned of our opponents in the Champions League, I would send a scout to their games, as well as using these DVDs, to help draw up a 30-page dossier, which details everything about them, their strengths and weaknesses, how they use set pieces, everything little detail I can find.

“You need all this information. Football has changed. You can’t just send a team out and tell them to play their best and all will be fine. 

“Back in the 1970s and 1980s you didn’t have the coverage of European football you have now, you didn’t know too much, you went into games blind with the attitude, ‘We are a good team, we will play our game, that’s it.’ 

“But now everyone knows everything about each other, so you need this deeper level of analysis.

“Before a game, I will use these videos and search for any small weaknesses in our opponents, something I can exploit that possibly hasn’t been noticed before.

“In 2008 when we played Inter Milan at Anfield in the Champions League we knew we had to isolate Marco Materazzi and exploit his lack of pace against Fernando Torres.

“Twice in the first half an hour of the game we got Torres up close to him, and twice all he could do was foul him and pick up a yellow card each time, which saw him sent off. We now had a full hour to exploit this advantage and won 2-0.” 

All quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.