Real Madrid president Ramon Calderon has dismissed all reports suggesting that they were looking to poach Spaniard Rafael Benitez from Liverpool at the end of the season.
Real sacked Bernd Schuster as their coach last week after a run of poor results and appointed the former Sevilla and Tottenham Hotspur coach Juande Ramos as their coach on a six-month contract.
But it has been widely reported that Calderon and co would actually try and sign Benitez in the summer. Benitez, formerly with Real’s youth team and Valencia’s first team, has been the Liverpool manager since the summer of 2004 but there have been doubts on his contract extention with the Reds.
Real president Ramon Calderon though has declared that he is not looking to approach Benitez. In an interview with BBC Radio Five Live’s ‘Sportsweek’, he said:
“We want to see what happens with Ramos and at the end of the season, if everything is okay, and I hope so as he is a good coach, we will see what happens in May or June.
“We had to take this decision very quickly. I had a meeting with Bernd Schuster and he was very disappointed and not excited about keeping his job, so we got in touch with two or three coaches who could come and one of those was Ramos. That is why we did it so quickly.
“Benitez is a very good coach and he was with us as everyone knows. He was training the youth team at Real Madrid. But he is the coach of Liverpool and I am sure he is going to be there for a long time and so he is not an alternative for us.
“We know him very well, he is Spanish and worked with Real Madrid a long time ago. He is a very good coach but I would like to have Juande for longer than six months. So let’s hope everything is going to be okay and if it is like that, he will continue with us.”