Benitez To Juve?

Well that was one of the biggest head­lines of the week in both Eng­land and Spain as well as in Italy.    Not pleased with Clau­dio Rainieri´s job dur­ing his 14-month tenure with La Vec­chia Sig­nora, the club is already look­ing for a replace­ment and the Spaniard is at the top of the list.  Some­how they were never able to fig­ure out the fact that Rainieri has a spe­cial touch.  He is the type of coach that is able to turn gold into lead. If you needed a greater exam­ple of his hap­lessnes, look at Chelsea before and after him.

The sea­son has not gone the way the fans and board would have planned it at the begin­ning of the sea­son.  Juven­tus was one of the teams that was to be a major player in the trans­fer mar­ket, but they did not quite make the splash that they wanted to.  That is mostly attrib­uted to injuries to play­ers like David Trezeguet, the fact that some of the trans­fers are not get­ting into rhythm or adapt­ing to Serie A.   Regard­less of his per­for­mance on the bench, in Italy when they say you will be gone, chances are that you will be.

Although it is still a while until this becomes a real­ity, it could hap­pen because Liv­er­pool have not  put a deal on the table to extend the coach´s con­tract.  Ben­itez is cur­rently under con­tract until 2010, the cur­rent own­er­ship of the club has not put into action a promise that they made seven months ago– extend Rafa´s con­tract.  Add that to yet the inifite num­ber of rea­sons why fans of the Reds despise their cur­rent Amer­i­can own­er­ship.  This has not only started a greater rift between the coach and own­ers George Gillett and Dan Hicks, but could end the rela­tion­ship per­ma­nently.   Both sides are not too fond of eac other to begin with espe­cially after Hicks began inquir­ing about the pos­si­bil­ity of Jur­gen Klins­mann in the mid­dle of last year.

A new poll states that Juven­tus fans pre­fer the Liv­er­pool boss over for­mer Barcelona man Frank Rik­jaard.  That would be obvi­ous because of the for­mer AC Milan man´s alle­giances.    Juven­tus are cur­rently in 11th place in the Serie table with only nine points.

Tagged as: Juventus