Rafa Benitez: Why more goalkeepers could become managers and how to spot a player who wants to be a coach

By Rafa Benitez Oct 16, 2019 20
With some of the players we have worked with, it is very clear from the start — you know they will stay involved in football in some capacity, either as a coach or a manager. With Steven Gerrard, I honestly did not know. I remember our first meeting in Portugal, when we had just joined Liverpool and Stevie, who was playing for England in the European Championship, was close to leaving. We just talked football.

You could see how much he liked the game. We spoke about tactics. He and Jamie Carragher, who was also there, had been following Valencia and I think they were impressed by the way we’d played against Liverpool in the Champions League a couple of years before (we beat them twice — maybe they did not enjoy the results so much). He was interested, but a lot of what he talked about was the performances and quality of players.

Stevie stayed at Anfield, we were together for six years and you could see that every year he was learning a bit more and his...