Watching Rafa Benitez in my formative years as a Liverpool fan was a huge stroke of luck. It was a crash-course in strategy, really, and each week was a new lesson in how to win (or draw) soccer matches. Perhaps more importantly, I learned the relevance of those draws, a valuable understanding for someone accustomed to the win-at-all-costs mentality demonstrated by the tie-breaking structures in American sports.
As I broadened my understanding of how tactics worked, I quickly lost interest in the soap-opera style stories generated by the mainstream (UK) media. The mechanics of the games themselves were far more captivating than the wild (and often embellished, sometimes invented) stories about manager's comments, post-match handshakes, and rumors regarding upcoming transfers.
