Gerard Houllier had brought Liverpool into the modern era of football, but in the summer of 2004 his race for the Reds was over and change was needed.
Fresh from winning his second Spanish top-flight title at Valencia, Benitez arrived on Merseyside and was appointed on 16 June 2004.
However, his appointment was leaked early on by then Liverpool FC website writer Mark Platt.
Platt is now the club’s beloved museum curator and historian, Platt explained in an interview with liverpoolfc.com: “We knew Rafa would be appointed, but it had yet to be officially announced.
“I was off for a few days and had to go back to work on Saturday. On Friday evening, in preparation for the next day, I logged in briefly to see which stories were waiting to be published.
“The story confirming Rafa as manager was written in advance, so I went in to read it but accidentally pressed the publish button!
“My heart sank and I thought, ‘What have I done?’
“I panicked and pressed all the buttons to stop it! Somehow it worked. No one saw it and luckily I got away with it.
“Today it would be different, someone would be on it right away.”
Another moment, which will set his heart racing for different reasons, came when Platt had his first interview with a Liverpool manager.
While on a journalism course as a youngster at Liverpool Community College near the Melwood training ground, he took a chance and managed to talk to Graeme Souness.
Platt recalled: “A group of us, all Liverpool fans, were doing a project and had to go out and bring back a story. I thought, ‘Let’s go to Melwood.’
“Graeme Souness was the manager, it must have been 1992 or 1993. We knocked on the gate and said, ‘Can we speak to Graeme Souness? We’re from university.’
“The guy says, ‘Come in, guys. I’ll go talk to him.’
“He comes back and says, ‘He’s going to take a shower and he’ll come talk to you when he’s done.’
“True to his word, Souness came out and must have given us well over half an hour and forty minutes and we fired all kinds of questions at him.
“We wrote the article and actually sold it to a magazine. That definitely gave me a taste for it.”
There is no chance that a group of students today would have such access to Arne Slot because of all the media obligations he already has to deal with!
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