A former Chelsea coach has revealed how Rafa Benitez had a hand in Mohamed Salah’s eventual move to Liverpool.
Salah joined Chelsea from Basel in January 2014, but never managed to get consistent game time.
Two separate loan spells at Fiorentina and Roma eventually led to Salah joining the latter on a permanent basis in 2016.
After spending two seasons at Roma, one on loan and one as a permanent member of the squad, Salah joined Liverpool in 2017.
The Egyptian left Chelsea with just 19 appearances and two goals to his name despite being on the club’s books for two-and-a-half years.
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Eddie Newton, who was Chelsea’s loan technical coach during Salah’s temporary stints away from Stamford Bridge, has explained how Benitez started the system which led to the Egyptian's eventual exit.
Benitez was Chelsea’s interim manager from 2012-13 and took over from Roberto Di Matteo, and left for the arrival of Jose Mourinho for his second spell in charge.
"It was up and running but it wasn’t a developed system. It was (ex-Chelsea technical director) Michael Emenalo’s brainchild basically,” Newton told Goal .
“He brought me into his office and said, ‘Look, Rafa [Benitez] is a bit worried about having you because you were with the last manager (Roberto Di Matteo)’.
"So I wasn’t going to be with him in the first-team, but he had another job for me to develop and run the loan programme. He said we had too many young players who were too good for the Under-23s, but not good enough for the first team.
"We needed to send them away on loan, but we needed to do it better than before. We didn’t know enough about these guys away on loan.
"He gave me a blueprint and then I built it. We kept meeting every so often, and he said he would get me what I needed to make it work."
Newton continued: "It showed the players that Chelsea cared about them and were not just doing it for getting them off the wage bill. Many loans went well, others didn’t, but the ones that didn’t we visited more. We looked for ways to help the club manager.
"We developed the feedback we gave players and improved our organisation with other clubs.
"When Michael went, I would get involved in loan negotiations before it went onto Marina [Granovskaia]. It was something we built and that I was really proud of by the end.
"We built a world-class programme that I know a lot of other people are copying today. A lot of clubs came to us and asked us for a little bit of help, we helped them up their game and that’s fine. You can only have the secret for a little bit!"
