Rafa Benitez has finally spoken about the rumoured interest from Celtic in his services earlier this summer.
The Spaniard was a favourite among the fans as the club looked for a long-term successor to Brendan Rodgers at the tail end of last season. Of course, nothing came of the chatter with the Celtic board instead electing to give the full-time gig to Neil Lennon.
Benitez, who has since joined Chinese side Dalian Yifang, says there was never any “official approach” from Celtic.
“I was aware of some interest but we didn’t have any official approach,” he told the Scottish Sun.
“I was still under contract at Newcastle so we couldn’t even consider this option.”
Benitez was perhaps never realistic for Celtic
It’s no surprise to hear that no official approach was ever made from Celtic to Benitez. It seems like the club always had their heart set on Lennon as the new boss and the Scottish Cup final victory over Hearts only went to solidify that.
In a hypothetical world it would have been really interesting to see what had happened had we lost that Hampden clash to the Jambos. The Celtic support as a whole would have reacted very negatively to Lennon’s appointment – even more so if it had accompanied the loss of the treble treble.
They may have been forced to go out and get another big name manager like Benitez.
The former Newcastle man may always have been out of our reach though. When you look at the way we’ve conducted transfer business so far this summer, you can’t imagine that he would have been too keen to come aboard.
As it is we have Lennon and a rather big few days to round off the transfer window. Our recruitment hasn’t been great so far this summer but it still could be salvaged with a couple more key signings before Monday evening.
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