Benitez left with much to ponder

Dominic Fifieldreflects on the antipathy which has developed between Rafael Benitez and Jose Mourinho

There was a moment last night when Rafael Benitez, disgusted as another promising move petered out with an over-hit cross into touch, turned his back on the play and, hands sunk deep into pockets, cursed in frustration as he shuffled back into the dugout. A few yards down the touchline Jose Mourinho broke away from his thoughts to glance up, his face creasing into a grin. Theirs is an antipathy which merely deepens with every meeting.

Benitez must have felt the Portuguese's smiling eyes boring into his back. The 14th meeting of these teams since their managers arrived three years ago had taken a familiar course, with Liverpool's initial promise undermined by a fine Chelsea goal.

The Merseysiders had arrived having failed even to score at Stamford Bridge in their previous five visits under the Spaniard. Joe Cole's goal just before the half-hour, plundered with such breathtaking speed, had appeared to prolong a troubling trend for those in red. Mourinho, arms pumping, had leapt from his bench for the only time in the first half as Benitez scowled.

These two managers had spent 25 minutes chatting after the final whistle after their first tete-a-tete, a 1-0 win for the Londoners on New Year's Day 2005, two emigres sharing common experiences in the bowels of Anfield.

Yet after an acrimonious League Cup final that season, their relationship fractured. "He is friends with most managers until they beat him," Benitez said recently.

Ever since, meetings between these teams have come with constant references to Chelsea's lavish spending on the one side, Liverpool's apparent limited ambitions or ugly style of play on the other.

Benitez had done his best to dead-bat questions in the build-up until riled, inevitably, by Mourinho - Liverpool were dismissed as little more than a cup team, with the Portuguese doubting that he would have kept his job at the Bridge had he achieved the same success as the Spaniard in the Premiership over the last three years.

The riposte was duly delivered and, once again, this tie had its sideshow.

"There is one difference between us," Mourinho had written in his programme notes. "We are playing for everything, Liverpool are playing for only this. Our players can't rest physically and mentally. They have been working like this for the last three months. This tie will be between a team at the maximum of their potential and one with a big heart and pride."

In the circumstances it seems odd to reflect that when the pair first arrived in England some had insisted they were cut from the same cloth, suggesting they had "reinvented" the game, such were the similarities in the way their teams played - all strength in possession and bite on the counter-attack.

At the time Benitez had insisted that, in reality, they had both reacted to the Galactico trend in modern football and reverted instead to an emphasis on the "collective". These days he would have added that Chelsea, thanks to Roman Abramovich, had the means to supplement their core with world-class extravagant talents.

The Spaniard needed some inspiration here. Jose Reina had done well to block from Frank Lampard early on and each mistake by Liverpool's back-line prompted the manager to spring in frustration to the edge of his technical area, arms pumping as he bellowed admonishments.

The sight of Petr Cech diving to save thrillingly from Steven Gerrard brought merely a rueful shrug of the shoulders, as if there was an inevitability about the result.

Guardian Service