Rafa Benitez is rightly considered one of the most influential managers in the Premier League era of English football.
The Spanish coach joined Liverpool in 2004 and led the Reds to an impressive amount of success with the 2006 FA Cup and, most famously, the 2005 UEFA Champions League with the Miracle of Istanbul.
A UEFA Europa League winner with Chelsea and a Championship title winner with Newcastle United, Benitez’s fingermarks are all over English football having taken over four teams in the Premier League in the last 20 years.
And Benitez has now shared what he first thought of the standards of English football’s academies when he visited Tottenham and West Ham in 1999.
Benitez shocked by how basic Tottenham and West Ham’s academies were
Speaking on Stick to Football, Benitez recounted the time he visited the London-based clubs, with the Spanish coach in a state of shock by how basic the facilities were and how simple the training practices were with Tottenham and West Ham.
Benitez said: “When I came to England I went to see Tottenham, West Ham and Manchester United’s first-team. But Tottenham and West Ham I went to see the academy, I was surprised at West Ham at this time, they have a multi-station machine [weights]. They were doing the same exercise, all the players with the same kilograms, you had the keeper and the winger like that.
“In Spain that’s impossible. I was surprised. Tottenham also surprised me. It was a rainy day in London, and they were indoors doing some crosses from the right side. They invited me to have a coffee afterward, the players were polite. The day after I was expecting them to do crossing from the left side but they didn’t do it.
“Why do you do they keep crossing from the right side in a session of one hour? In Spain you work both sides, when you have to start coaching players at eight to 12-years-old, that’s when you start learning football. In China for example they don’t have football in schools until 13, so that is the reason why they don’t have the coordination.”
Benitez will be proud to see English academies catch up with the rest of the world
It might have taken sone adjustment and a change to the culture of English football, but Benitez will now be proud with how good academies now are in amongst the Premier League’s elite as well as across the EFL.
A huge emphasis has been put on clubs to catch up with the rest of Europe in terms of how academies are run and what prospects should be learning at certain ages, with specialist programmes now common place.
Indeed, Benitez is now living in a completely different world when it comes to English football academies in the year 2024, and the Spanish coach will be pleased to see how far the likes of Tottenham and West Ham are now going to educate the next generation.
