Rafael Benitez gets an indifferent farewell at Stamford Bridge

When Rafael Benitez took charge of Chelsea, he had to handle a dressing room full of anxiety, with a pretty unbalanced squad. A chaotic 48 games in 175 days later, despite having a number of troubles to handle at Chelsea, Rafael Benitez has managed to secure a third place for the club and a European trophy as well.

None of the Chelsea players other than David Luiz mentioned the Spaniard’s name when they were addressing the fans in the centre of the pitch.

“I learnt a lot from him,” said David Luiz. “People said bad things about him but not many coaches can do what he does. Next year’s coach will change but the mentality needs to be the same.”

Benitez said: “It was for the players and the families. I received a lot of messages on my website, more than 200, saying ‘thank you very much’, people appreciating what we were trying to do. I think the fans have changed. After the Middlesbrough press conference, you could see a lot more support for the team. You could feel more support for the team. In my opinion, the majority of them were very positive in the end, which is good. And I think I changed the opinion of some of them. We tried to do our best.”

A couple of small banners were seen in the crowd in support of Rafa. One of them read: ‘Thank you Rafa; We forgive you. Good luck.’

The Spaniard also said that he was glad that the players had spoken to him personally.

“A lot of them said things to me,” he added. “It is one thing what you say in public, in a press conference but they were telling me privately, I’m really pleased with that.”

Source: Mirror