In front of an enthusiastic audience, Rafa Benitez spoke at the UEFA Professional Licence Course taking place in Cardiff, Wales. The manager from Madrid gave a detailed presentation entitled ‘Modern Times, Modern Managers’ in which he talked about his career as a coach in two areas: first as a youth coach at Real Madrid and then as the head coach on different benches of elite teams and at the top level. Benitez also spoke of the differences in club structures and organisation in different parts of the world and explained in detail to the lively audience technical aspects of the game such as zonal marking and rotation. He referred to the importance of using technology as a tool and the software available like the recently released program Globall Coach, developed by his technical staff; it allows you to create training exercises and sessions and analyse matches in just a few minutes on the mobile and simple to use iPad. He also showed how he and his technical staff use other software to analyse data, like the information he gets through companies such as Opta and Amisco. He emphasised though the importance of interpreting the data correctly to make the right decisions and the need to pay great attention to detail to be successful.

He spoke about management styles explaining that there are many different ways to succeed and each one can be used and adapted to your own vision of the game.

It turned out to be an interesting talk with an exchange of ideas and positive discussion on all these themes from the world of football, but considered on a professional level as only a meeting of professionals such as this could provide.

You could tell from their interesting questions and debate that the level of the candidates was high which can only be productive for them in the end.