Rafa Benitez has hit out at Real Madrid president Florentino Perez after his shock sacking by the club in January. In an interview with BT Sport, Benitez talked about the expectations of the board and how the club is a revolving door of managers.
Benitez sacking was followed almost instantly by the appointment of former Real Madrid legend Zinedine Zidane, who is currently at the helm. The Spaniard still seemed slightly dejected after his dismissal. Speaking to Gary Lineker he said, “You need to know exactly what happened in the last few years, You can see [Jose Antonio] Camacho, [Vicente] Del Bosque, [Manuel] Pellegrini, [Jose] Mourinho, [Carlo] Ancelotti -- it's not easy to be the manager there.”.
ZIndane is unbeaten since he has taken over winning six and losing only once. But Benitez has warned the current manager that Perez is a man without much patience saying, “You have to do everything perfect. As soon as something is wrong, or the chairman thinks something is wrong, you have problems.”
The former Liverpool head coach spent only seven months in charge of the club. There were reports that he had a fallout with some his star players with Ronaldo being the one name that was mentioned, but denied that there was any tension between him and the Portuguese star saying, “He was quite happy with the way we were training because we trained with the ball," Benitez said. "We had top-class players, they enjoy training with the ball, he's a winner, he's very competitive, he wants to win, to score goals. It's fine.”
Zidane’s men have one foot in the quarterfinals of the Champions League after beating Roma 2-0 in Italy yesteday. They played the same night Barcelona won their game in hand against Sporting Gijon in La Liga and went six points clear at the summit.
One of Benitez’s highlights at the club was qualifying to the knockout stages of the Champions League without losing a single game but that didn't seem enough to justify extending his tenure.
Here is the video of his interview with BT Sport:
