Benitez says Liverpool is “more then a club, it is the heart of the city”

Rafa Benitez will celebrate five years as Anfield manager next week and he admits the passion of the fans continues to inspire him. In an interview published in today’s Echo, he says the supporters make a difference:

“When I decided to sign a new contract I did it because Liverpool Football Club is more than a club,” he said. It is the heart of the city. It is our life and for the people here it means so much. Every single year, every single week and every single day when you talk with a fan he is supporting you and supporting the team,” he said. “You can see the passion and it makes a massive difference. This city has passion. When we talk about Evertonians they have passion for their club that is really good. Our fans are amazing and when I talk with people in Spain they all say the same. We will see it again when we go to Asia in pre-season. I receive a lot of letters from people talking about the club. And as I said before this is more than a club. It is the heart of the city.”

Benitez also spoke about adding to the squad this summer claiming he has enough money to buy one or two players: “I won’t talk about any figures and I can’t say how much we have. Clearly we don’t have too much to spend but I think we have enough money to add the one or two players that we need. I’m very happy with the squad we’ve got. If we can sign one or two players then I’m really positive that we can improve. We have a very good squad but we can still improve a little bit.”

Speaking about challenging next season and possibly surpassing their exploits Benitez said: “We have to fight. We have to do it. The people in this city are always fighting and have been fighting all their lives. We want to do the same. I have a lot of confidence in our squad and we want to fight like we did this year. It has been a terrific season for us. I’m also positive because we were talking recently about how Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard didn’t play together for a long time this season. Hopefully they will play together more next season.” he said. “We came very close and we were competing on all fronts. We want to repeat the same next season. Like this year we will try to compete on all fronts until the end.”