Steven Gerrard admits he’s “never been close” to Rafa Benitez

Steven Gerrard has discussed his relationship with former manager, Rafa Benitez.

While the former Liverpool captain states that he was never particularly close with the current Real Madrid manager, he admits that he values the impact his coaching had on his career. "Although we’re not very close and we’ve never been very close Rafa’s certainly the best coach I’ve ever worked with and I’ve got nothing but respect for the man," Gerrard said. Gerrard then played down the fact that Benitez chose not to send him a message when departing Liverpool, stating that he didn't know why he'd not been contacted by Spaniard. "You’d have to ask Rafa that reason.  I sent him a message when he left Liverpool but he didn’t send me one when I left, but it’s no big problem.  He’s got more important things to worry about than sending me a message when I’m leaving Liverpool. We had a very professional relationship, tactically he was a genius for me." Gerrard also speaks very highly of Roy Hodgson and adds that he felt that the England coach's ill-fated spell as Liverpool was simply down to bad timing. ‘I was gutted when he left Liverpool.  I thought the timing of him taking the Liverpool job was probably wrong because a lot of the fans wanted Dalglish in and Dalglish is the king at Liverpool.  I thought Roy paid the price for that, coming in before Kenny.  I think if it had been reversed and if he came in after him, he maybe would have got a bit more time and the fans would have had a bit more respect for him because he’s certainly a top coach, a good person and someone who works very hard to make sure his teams are hard to beat, so I’ve got a lot of respect for him." Gerrard was speaking on the upcoming BT Sport special -'Sport in Focus - Steven Gerrard'  - where the former Liverpool captain discusses many of the topics in his new book 'My Story'.