​Rafa Benitez's Fortress of Solitude

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports UK.

On the homepage of his website, a banner picture shows Rafa Benitez, rocking a New Dad look in baggy jeans and practical black shoes, standing on the edge of an advancing sea, more uncomfortable than poetic. When he talks about tactics on his blog, he always lists the goalkeeper when writing about formations. It's 1-4-4-2, not 4-4-2. Get it right, world.

Benitez has always been a man apart. He's always been the man who cares the most, the man who knows the most. If he is the only person writing 1-4-2-3-1 it's because he's the only person who really knows what he is talking about. It is the world, not Rafa, that must adapt. His knowledge, his brilliance, his work ethic, his pedantry, his stubbornness: these things keep the Spaniard locked in his fortress of solitude. They also keep him in work.

When, a week ago, Real Madrid's president Florentino Perez announced that he was replacing Benitez with Zinedine Zidane, few were surprised. On his website, Benitez wrote, "As a madridista from Madrid, steeped in the traditions and values of this institution, which I learned in the old sports city of Castellana, it has been an honour to work for these colours".

Having grown up in the city, cutting his teeth at the club, Benitez had finally been given his chance to manage Los Blancos. But Perez, a very rich man committed to doing things his very rich way, was never going to be a likely ally for a man as committed to control as Benitez. "I asked for a table and they brought me a lampshade", he famously said of the men in the Valencia boardroom when he left the club. "I wanted to stay compact, control the centre, create good moments, but they made me play James Rodriguez", he might have said of his departure from Madrid, had he been given the chance. He has never really had a good relationship with the moneymen.

This is not the first time Benitez has been handed a dream appointment and then seen it sour. At Liverpool, it took years for the poisonous neglect and stupidity of George Gillett and Tom Hicks to knock Benitez out of the door. At Madrid, it took only a few months for Perez's megalomania to send him packing. Through it all, Benitez has remained stubbornly committed to his stubbornness, firmly attached to his many quirks. Refusing to toe the line and say that Cristiano Ronaldo was the best player he'd ever coached was just the most recent in a long line of incidents in which Rafa insisted on being Rafa. He's like Don Quixote on a mission to civilise the world, or the robust Spanish version of the Dark Knight, insisting that he is the hero football deserves, even if football is too stupid to see that right now.

From his time in England, various memories of Benitez the man apart stand out. Telling the British honours system where to get off by bluntly insisting on referring to (Sir) Alex Ferguson as "Mr Ferguson"; saying again and again that the referee was "perfect" after a loss at Portsmouth in late 2009; having a pop at another ref by repeatedly implying that "27,000 people" had seen what he could not; looking at his watch while everyone wildly celebrated a David N'Gog goal against Manchester United…

Time after time, Benitez showed that, while all around him might be losing their heads, he was furiously analysing videos of past games. Known at Melwood for putting in very long hours at the office, Benitez has always been a coach who sought to instruct rather than endear. At their best, his teams play like well-oiled machines, the players fitting like cogs into a whole. But this vision of machine football comes with a human cost. Attacking players, particularly, can end up feeling as though Benitez would like to control their every movement. Jermaine Pennant felt his one-time manager was always shouting at him from the touchline: "He always wanted me to get to the byline but sometimes I thought, 'Can't I just express myself?'"

Better players than Pennant have felt exhausted, restricted and enraged by Benitez's obsessively controlling approach. In the end, Xabi Alonso, Yossi Benayoun, Ryan Babel and Albert Riera, among others, fell out with Benitez. At Real Madrid, it was hardly surprising that Cristiano Ronaldo had little time for him.

The tragedy for Benitez is that, in the right circumstances, he can succeed. It's perhaps also no coincidence that he does this when he comes out of his fortress of solitude, as well as when he has control. At Valencia, he had players who believed in his approach and who won him two La Liga titles and a UEFA Cup. At Liverpool, belief in his meticulous methods lasted long enough to win the club the Champions League, the FA Cup, and to come within four points of a first league title in two decades. Through most of this success, he had his invaluable assistant Pako Ayestarán by his side. Many close to Benitez suggest that he has never truly replaced Ayestarán.

In a 2012 interview with The Anfield Wrap, Benitez said that, "The main thing is to win and you have to use the players you have". For the Spaniard, "to lose, playing well" is a "big mistake". Such a philosophy was never going to fly at Real in the age of the galácticos. Benitez needs to be the controlling head of a group that he meticulously organises himself. He needs to be the (benign) dictator, doing what is required for the good of the people. He is a Soviet planner in the era of marketing men. He is the man of substance in the age of style. He is standing on the edge of the sea, and the tide is coming in.

@oscarrickettnow