Rafa Benitez has waived his right to a sunny, summer holiday in order to ensure Newcastle United are ready for their upcoming season in the Championship.
The Spaniard will now focus on rectifying the issues he has with the scouting set-up, recruitment of young players and the academy, amongst other things.
When questioned by The Chronicle about not taking a holiday, Benitez said:
When you’ve been far away from your family like me for two and a half years, you stay at home. Being with family is like a holiday for me. I am really pleased to be at Newcastle because my family are happy that I am going to be close to them. Of course, you can’t stop working. And we’ve already been working and, hopefully, we can see something in the next few weeks.
As Benitez is working hard and preparing for next season, the players are on holiday until July 1st – except those who are preparing for the European Championships, who are likely to take a holiday once their country has played their part in the competition.
Benitez told The Chronicle:
We will start on July 1. We’re going to Ireland and we will try to approach the pre-season with the idea of football, that’s what matters. We will work as much as we can. We will have between five and seven friendlies, we’ll have to decide that. The idea is to have time with the team and to prepare the team properly. We know we will have plenty of games during the season.
One player unlikely to return from his holiday is club captain Fabricio Coloccini, who revealed to Argentine reporters yesterday, that a return to his home country and more specifically San Lorenzo is on his mind.
While the interview has been conducted in Spanish and the full translated transcript has not been released yet, one quote from the interview that has emerged online is: “I want to return to Argentina and San Lorenzo is the priority, of course.”
