Liverpool’s head of the club’s successful youth academy has hit back at Rafa Benitez, the team’s manager, who he accuses of taking the reigns from him to the detriment of both the club and the development of players he’s been coaching. Steve Heighway, a former winger for Liverpool and the Irish national team, called Benitez’s decision to take control of the academy “crazy.”
“Rafa is a terrific manager, tactically astute with qualities I really admire,” Heighway said. “In my view, I’m the best coach of 17 and 18-year-old players in this club. But I no longer get the chance to do that.” Indeed, Heighway’s record would back those claims up. In his 19 years at the club, the youth academy director groomed several young players, including Michael Owen and Steven Gerrard.
Heighway, who played in the NASL and was one of the first prominent coaches in the burgeoning U.S. youth soccer movement of the early 1980s, accuses Benitez of micromanaging, saying he was never asked which players he thought were best. “His staff watch the players and his staff make the decisions. Managers are control freaks,” he added. “They are not used to people disagreeing with them, standing up to them in general. It became very obvious that was it; once I had disagreed with him, I wasn’t going to get anywhere with him.” Heighway says he wants to remain with Liverpool part-time and may seek a youth development job with Liverpool’s U.S. operations, which have ramped up in the wake of its purchase by a pair of American billionaires earlier this season.