by Benny The Noon » Tue Nov 24, 2009 12:58 pm
Response from Rory Smith from Telegraph
I have shown I can do it plenty of times. I know I could be further in my career but if nobody helps you, if they don’t make it easier for you then it is difficult.”
Ryan Babel is clearly not one for introspection. Another day, another set of quotes attributed to the Dutch forward criticising his manager, his team-mates, cruel fate and whoever else springs to mind as he expresses his dissatisfaction with life on Anfield’s periphery. He wants to “discuss his future” in January, wants to know where he stands, wants to ask what the future holds. The problem is he will direct those questions at Rafael Benitez, when only the player himself can provide the answers.
When Benitez pipped Arsene Wenger to Babel’s signature in 2007, he was one of the most coveted players in Europe. He had rocketed to prominence in Holland, the latest model from the Ajax production line of talent, and starred at that year’s European under-21 championship. He had power and pace to burn, a right foot like a traction engine (thanks, Alan Partridge), and the technical ability for which the Dutch are famed. He could play on either flank or through the middle. He was, in a raw, base form, the complete modern forward, a Thierry Henry for the second decade of the 21st century. He was £11 million of promise, a coup for Benitez in those heady days when Fernando Torres and Yossi Benayoun also arrived, proof of what the money provided by Tom Hicks and George Gillett could turn Liverpool into: a place more tempting for colts than Arsenal, a team packed with the pick of Europe’s bright young things. And Yossi Benayoun, but more on that later.
Yet when he departs Melwood, Liverpool’s training base, for the last time in January, as now seems certain, few of those who regularly visit Anfield will miss him. He has become the Kop’s bete noire, his cameos from the bench soundtracked by groans and complaint, rather than accompanied by a tingle of electricity. One colleague remarked to me last season that he looked like “he’d borrowed someone else’s legs”. The £6 million or so Liverpool would pocket from his sale – or even the space on the wage bill freed up by a loan move back to Ajax – is of more use to a club with a paper-thin squad than a full Dutch international, so sour has that 2007 dream turned. Liverpool need the money, and they literally cannot afford to carry passengers. Even promise is not enough, not if it’s as fleeting, as occasional, as Babel’s.
To Babel, of course, this is because Benitez has never trusted him, despite his hugely exciting first season – his goal against Derby, shimmying effortlessly to hoodwink two defenders, then firing past a stranded Stephen Bywater, won him the hearts of the Kop, who know a thing or two about potential – and the glimpses of his ability since then, most recently with that thunderous strike against Lyon. His team-mates do not pass to him, do not like him, the Hispanophone players sticking together off the field, at a club split into cliques. It is everyone else’s fault.
Yet consider the example of one of Babel’s confidantes, and the man who was unveiled alongside him on a balmy July day two years ago. Benayoun’s signing was greeted with dismay by Liverpool’s fans, unconvinced that a West Ham squad man was fit to wear their number 15 shirt, let alone the 11 of Steve McMahon, Ian Callaghan, Jamie Redknapp (fine midfielder, truly, indescribably awful pundit) and, er, Vladimir Smicer he started off in. For 18 months, Benitez seemed to agree, allowing him only the briefest of cameos from the bench, and every so often, the quotes would appear, Benayoun cutting the disillusioned, dejected figure Babel does now.
But Benayoun learned. It’s hard to say when he learned, or even what he learned, but it all changed in the Bernabeu in February, the smallest man on the field leaping highest and, with one glance of his slightly jaundiced head, revitalising Liverpool’s season. Since that game, he has been Liverpool’s best player, bar none, for nine months. Benayoun cost £5.5 million. He was the junior partner when he and Babel signed. Now he is worth £20 million, at least. Along with Pepe Reina, Daniel Agger, Jamie Carragher, Glen Johnson, Javier Mascherano, Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres, he is part of Liverpool’s core. He is, possibly, the best schemer, as they used to be called, in English football today.
Maybe because Benayoun grew up playing on the streets of Dimona, in Israel’s Negev desert, while Babel was cosseted and feted as a star in Ajax’s youth academy their attitudes to hard work, to diligence and patience are different. Babel can blame his coach for being “cold” all he likes, but Benayoun’s experience shows that any player, regardless of reputation, can win Benitez’s absolute trust. The reason Babel has not is not Benitez, or Liverpool’s factionalism, it is Babel. He has not proved to his coach he is worthy on the training field or, probably more importantly, on the pitch.
His glimpses of brilliance – always the same, too: cut inside, shoot, score – are not enough to counteract the effects of dozens of appearances, as substitute and starter, when he does nothing but lose the ball and run down blind alleys, greeted with groans yet again from Anfield’s wailing wall. They used to be like that with Benayoun, too. But when he leaves, as they all do, a tear or two may even be shed, maybe a star of David unveiled on the Kop, a symbol of Ajax as well as Israel. There will be no such pomp and circumstance, no thanks for the memories, for Babel.