Chelsea v Liverpool: Rafa's respect does not stretch to friendship

Mind games? Perish the thought. Serious football men like Rafael Benitez are above such things. As for the cult of the personality and responding to the occasional taunts of his rivals, the important thing, he reminded us at Liverpool's training ground on Friday, was to "think about the team, not playing games".

Then he was asked about Jose Mourinho, who for the second time in three seasons stands between Liverpool and a place in the Champions' League final. "I will talk about him as a manager. He is a good manager, positive for the game. Another style, another approach, but a good manager." And as a person, Rafa? A pause. "As a manager, he's a good manager. I have a lot of respect for him as a manager."

The antipathy between the two Iberians is unexpected, but has had abundant opportunity to develop since they arrived in England in the same month three years ago. Wednesday's first leg of the semi-final at Stamford Bridge will be their teams' 14th meeting in that time, few if any of them unimportant. In the beginning, a shared background in Spanish football seemed to unite them, but as games became tenser, the relationship deteriorated and the traditional handshake, whether pre- or post-match, lapsed. Benitez recently blamed that on Mourinho only being good friends "until we started winning".

"To be a friend of another manager is not easy," he added on Friday, "because you don't see him normally. Then you are doing your job and he is doing his. Each manager decides how to do things.

"If the other managers talk about football, I will talk about football. After the game I've met some managers and we talk about football or the game for five minutes. We invite them. I was with [Gareth] Southgate the other day and David Moyes and I don't have any other problem with other managers." But there will be neither rioja nor vinho verde with Jose, it seems: "I don't think so. Normally we haven't done this."

If Chelsea's manager was once gracious in victory, he had as much practice against Liverpool as anyone. Not until the fifth encounter, at the end of that first season of rivalry, were the London side beaten, and then in controversial circumstances. Mourinho has been known to point out once or twice that when Luis Garcia won the previous Champions' League semi-final at Anfield, the ball did not actually cross the line; to which Liverpool respond that had the referee not said it did, he would have been obliged to award a penalty and send off Petr Cech, even at that early stage. Ominously, the "ghost goal" remains the only one in four European games between the sides.

More recently Liverpool have gained the upper hand, with 2-1 successes on neutral grounds in the FA Cup semi-finals and Community Shield, plus a 2-0 Premiership victory at Anfield three months ago. On that occasion - Chelsea's last defeat, some 20 games ago - they took advantage of a back four missing John Terry and the currently outstanding Ricardo Carvalho by directing high balls towards Peter Crouch and Dirk Kuyt as Mourinho complained about having "a defensive line with no defenders".

Paulo Ferreira and Michael Essien, standing in as centre-halves, could not cope; Crouch won the headers, Kuyt picked up the pieces and Chelsea were beaten as comprehensively as in any of their manager's 170 matches in charge.

Three Liverpool wins in the last four encounters have led to the suggestion that Benitez now has the measure of his rival tactically, something that he plays down with characteristic modesty: "You can prepare a plan but at the end of the day it depends on the players. The [semi-final] game that we won against Chelsea would have been different if [Eidur] Gudjohnsen had scored at the end, but it was the same plan, the same approach. You must play really well if you want to beat Chelsea."

You must also score a goal, which, remarkably, Liverpool have failed to do in Benitez's five visits to Stamford Bridge. Not, he insists, because they have simply played for the goalless draw duly achieved in two dreadfully anti-climatic European games there. "In the League the team that concedes least goals is Chelsea, and after them Liverpool. It's not [just] difficult for us, it is difficult for everybody. They are really good in defence and in the middle and in front. We are thinking about scoring to win. In Barcelona our idea was to win. We conceded a goal but scored two and that was very positive. To score in Europe is really important."

Do not, however, expect a feast; in fact, prepare for a fast. Chelsea, as we know, do not gorge on goals, preferring to help themselves to just enough and then prepare for the next time. Scoring four times at West Ham in midweek was only the fourth occasion they had managed such a thing in more than 50 games against Premiership or European opposition this season. Liverpool work on the same principle, as a result of which the meetings are generally cagey affairs. There have been only two exceptions. In the Carling Cup final of 2005 there was an extra half an hour, in which Chelsea came through 3-2; at Anfield the following season they played on the break to great effect and benefited from some poor defending to win 4-1.

Benitez teams concede four goals even less frequently than Chelsea score them, and he clearly regards the events of that Sunday afternoon as something of a freak: "It was a strange game, we conceded crazy, stupid goals. Normally they would play counterattack. Now they have plenty of possession. We will try to play with high tempo if we can, but when you play against a defensively good team that is not easy. We are good in defence and they are good in defence. So I don't think you will see a lot of goals."

We have been warned.