When referee Alan Wiley blows his whistle to signal full time at 3.30pm at Anfield on Sunday, the Premier League will have its answer. So, too, will the Kop. The questions they are asking, though, are rather different.
While hundreds of lenses and millions of viewers will judge the closing chapters in a nerve-shredding title race by the looks of despair or of joy on the faces of Chelsea’s players, Liverpool’s minds will turn exclusively to Rafael Benítez.
His every movement will be tracked, every action monitored, as the game’s most famous ancient gallery tries to decipher whether, after six years, this really is the end.
The Spaniard has dallied with departing Liverpool before; he was saved by the defiant support of thousands of fans when Tom Hicks and George Gillett, the club’s owners, discussed his position with Jürgen Klinsmann; he was tempted by the riches of Real Madrid when his elaborate plans for the club were put at risk by the penury forced upon him by the same duo.
Never before, though, have the noises emanating from his supposed suitors been so strong, so insistent.
Last Monday, sources at Juventus suggested that the Spaniard’s arrival was “90 per cent” certain. By the time Andrea Agnelli was ratified as the Italian club’s new president on Thursday, the message had changed. The Old Lady is convinced she has got her man.
A four-year contract, worth £3.5 million a season after tax, awaits him in Turin. Transfer spending will be to the tune of around £60 million a year for the next three years.
The engagement is not yet announced, but Juventus’s proprietor John Elkann has already spotted his first wedding present. A Juve delegation flew to São Paulo this week to finalise a £12 million deal for Hernanes, the Brazil international, a player Benítez is known to admire.
It is not hard to see why such a project would tempt the Liverpool manager.
Ever since he arrived, he has faced a struggle to build the empire he desires, hamstrung first by an inability to land his primary targets — Simão Sabrosa and Daniel Alves both slipped from his grasp at the last — and later by the empty wallet and unfulfilled promises brought to Merseyside by Hicks and Gillett.
Benítez freely admits his responsibility in recent years has been to run a “company,” rather than a football club, balancing Anfield’s books rather than its squad.
Though RBS has brought in Martin Broughton as chairman and Barclays Capital to sell the club, which will end the tenure of Hicks and Gillett, there is no guarantee that the situation will change in the future. Juventus, in comparison, are offering him spending that is all but limitless. It is hardly Sophie’s Choice.
It would not be a choice at all, Benítez admits, were it not for the debt of gratitude he feels towards those fans who stood by him when the question was not whether Liverpool were good enough for the Spaniard, but whether he was of sufficient calibre for them.
“If I am here it is because of them,” he said. “I have had massive offers over the last year and I decided to stay because of them. I gave my word last year because of the fans. The fans are the main thing, the best thing, the club has. I decided to stay last year because of the fans and for one year I have been trying to do my best, and we will see what happens in the future.”
For all that loyalty, though, Benítez has steadfastly refused to quash the increasingly frenzied speculation suggesting he is on the verge of opting out of his £20 million, four-year contract and moving to Juve.
He has singularly failed to offer his supporters the same assurances over his future that he has made clear he would like from his employers, insisting only that he “cannot talk about the long-term future”.
Is that because he does not know what his future holds? “I know the future, and it is Chelsea.” Where does he want to be next season? “I want to win against Chelsea.” Juventus, though, are adamant he is their next coach. “I am here now, and I hope to be here against Chelsea.”
Perhaps, then, the answer the Kop seek is clear. So desperate a land has Anfield become that there are many who will welcome it, many who feel he has run his course, his successes, domestic and European, written out of history as the doctrine of Benítez as failure becomes orthodoxy.
Yet even if this is the end for Benítez, if Sunday is the final act on the Anfield stage where once they worshipped him, there is no closure for Liverpool.
Fans and board members alike may talk of attracting Jose Mourinho or Fabio Capello as Benítez’s replacement, a manager of the utmost quality, but with Anfield’s coffers empty and its ownership uncertain, such ambitions appear almost delusional. The end of the Benítez saga may come Sunday. Liverpool’s is doomed to continue.
