Benitez lacks grace to admit wonder of Bale

Gareth Bale’s stock is shooting through the roof and his dazzling display in the Champions League for the second time in a fortnight had the world and his wife waxing lyrical about the Welshman. But James Lawton, writing in the Independent, feels Inter Milan boss Rafael Benitez is lacking in class for not giving enough praise to the Tottenham man.

"The coach's reaction to Bale's rampage was instructive. While one of the greatest of modern players, Luis Figo, shook his head in wonderment at such a dominant but also controlled performance, and one leading Italian newspaper declared, "Frightening Bale sweeps away Inter", Benitez bemoaned a too generous allocation of space. "We knew it would be difficult to stop him if he had space. He was running but he had the space and that was the difference."

But it was the difference from what? Presumably it was the possibility that an individual player might be so strong, might be so aware of all around him, and made so confident in his own ability, that he could make the defensive calculation of even a Mourinho, or his legendary Inter predecessor Helenio Herrera, seem nothing more than good intentions.

Benitez's intentions towards Bale, despite the young Welshman's astonishing impact in San Siro so recently, were not easy to identify. Maicon, voted the Champions League's best full-back after last year's campaign, found himself repeatedly alone and contemplating old age far earlier than he can ever have anticipated.

What Benitez might have had the grace to say was that there are some nights when the coach is obliged to throw away his notes and acknowledge that there was never a set of tactics equipped to prevail over the force of great performance. Maradona reminded the Germans of this in the 1986 World Cup, when the Argentine came into the game carrying menace some way beyond even that generated so remarkably by Bale in recent weeks. The Germans put their most able player, Lothär Matthaus, on Maradona and he did a brilliant job – except for the moment of blinding instinct which saw space and opportunity for a pass of disembowelling penetration.

Bale had more than a few such moments against Benitez's team and they were filled with so much force and vision that to suggest they were merely the result of negligence, of too much space too easily yielded, was ungenerous to the point of perverse.

No one is saying that Benitez is failing, at least not just yet, in the most hazardous footsteps of Mourinho.

He has players of outstanding competitive character, which is his greatest resource as his Italian honeymoon draws to a close. But it is also already clear enough he has to forget about Liverpool, edit out the strange riddles, and remember to get close to those players who have already proved they can win at the highest level – a lot closer, certainly, than he did to the problem of Gareth Bale."