Feb 13 2008: EXCLUSIVE by Tony Barrett, Liverpool Echo
RAFA BENITEZ is ready to take legal action against the News of the World.
The Liverpool manager was left seething after the Sunday tabloid newspaper ran a back page article at the weekend claiming that he blamed the club's owners for the team's failure to challenge for the Premier League title this season.
The News of the World claimed it as an exclusive even though Benitez insists he did not speak to either the newspaper or the journalist who wrote the article in question, Rob Beasley.
Benitez believes the story was taken from an interview he did with Spanish newspaper El Mundo in which journalist Inma Lidon asked him if he blamed Tom Hicks and George Gillett for upsetting Liverpool's season.
The question, when translated into English, read: "The owners were lacking faith in your work a couple of months ago when the team was six points behind the leaders with a game in hand.
"Has this issue influenced the progress of the team?"
To which Benitez - according to a translation in the hands of his solicitor, Richard Green, of leading Liverpool law firm Hill Dickinson – replied: “As a coach you could say yes.
"It would be the perfect excuse, but I don't want to use it.
"What is clear is that at that time we were in a good position and the team was at the point of winning many of the matches that we have drawn and that is what brought us down."
But when the News of the World ran the story the following day the headline accompanying it said: "It's Your Fault: Rafa In New Blast At Owners".
Benitez was so outraged by the story - and by the fact the News of the World claimed he had spoken exclusively to them - that he launched a blistering verbal attack on it in a pre-match interview before Sunday's game with Chelsea.
He said: "It is no surprise. Everybody in Liverpool knows that there are two newspapers that you cannot trust. This is one of them.
"He (Beasley) talks of it being an exclusive, but the journalist is lying. I was talking with the Spanish press - he was manipulating everything."
When asked about his relationship with the club's owners, the Reds boss added: "I have contact with them, especially with Mr Hicks, because he (Beasley) was talking about Mr Hicks and I think he is lying.
"Well, clearly he is lying because I did not talk with him."
Having studied the article, Green was today sending a “letter before claim” to both the News of the World and Beasley, informing them of the criteria for the claim.
The ECHO understands the claim is based on the potential of:
(a) Mr Benitez having been libelled by the article.
(b) False attribution - ie, that it used quotes that Mr Benitez did not say or that were taken so far out of context that they distorted the whole article.
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