When Liverpool manager 'resigned' before Reds rocked up to European heavyweights - and won

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"We would be very surprised if Rafa is still the Liverpool boss by midnight on Sunday."That Wednesday wasn't just any old Wednesday though, it was the day that Rafa Benitez was taking his Liverpool side into a Champions League last-16 tie against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu, the club of his dreams and the city he called home.Liverpool were in superb form too. But inside the club there was chaos.This was, of course, the Liverpool of Tom Hicks and George Gillett, and a club of mounting tensions ever since it became abundantly clear that the two American owners didn't have anything like the money they had promised they had when they pitched up at Anfield two years previously.Just over a year earlier there was outcry when the Liverpool Echo managed to get Hicks to admit that they'd approached Jurgen Klinsmann to potentially replace Liverpool's 2005 Champions League winning manager, and Benitez had grown fond of making pointed references to his dissatisfaction with the running of the club in press conferences.By January 2009, a month before the Madrid trip, talk around a contract extension for the manager had reached fever pitch.Benitez had rejected the first offer on the table because it removed his level of control over transfers, and the negotiations were extremely tense."Hopefully [there will be a resolution], but we will see," he said before a Merseyside derby at Anfield."The first time, when the owners spoke to me about an extension, I said I wanted to do it in one week.

We have been [talking] for two months, it was not my idea and I didn't want to do this. The Liverpool manager was was refusing to play ball though."They have 11 good players and are very dangerous so it is more important to focus on them than other things," he said."They are my friends here and I have good memories with them.

It is just about winning a Champions League game against a top side in Europe."Winning was going to be more difficult without the injured Steven Gerrard, who was set to only be fit enough for a place on the bench, but by the day of the game the players on the pitch were the last thing on everyone's minds.Back then the notion of online bookies no longer taking bets on something due to a rush of money was still rather new, and as the rumour that Benitez had resigned spread around Liverpool like wildfire, there was genuine interest over whether or not he'd be taking his seat in the dugout that night.Some were adamant that he'd gone, with assistant Sammy Lee set to take charge of the team and perhaps aided on the bench by experienced substitutes Gerrard and Sami Hyypia.There was a surprise to some, then, when the manager emerged for his pre-match press duties at the Bernabeu, and then took his seat on the side of the pitch. My wife and young children had been jumping up and down with excitement, watching at home, but he didn't say a word to me about the goal."So did Benitez have other things on his mind then?