The problem for Fernando Torres at Atletico Madrid, Spaniards used to reckon,
was that, with him, Atletico became a one-man team. By the end of Tuesday
night in Marseilles, something of the same condition appeared to be taking
Torres over with Liverpool. First, a colleague comparing him favourably with
Wayne Rooney; then designating him a forward of the rank and style of Ian
Rush. Next, we heard him likened to the Liverpool-vintage Michael Owen. Some
team they would be; some kid Torres is turning into so soon into his
adventure on Merseyside.
In Madrid, Torres’s capacity for the spectacular would far outweigh his
occasional tendency for the fluffed finish. With Liverpool, the balance has
shifted. His dazzling goal at the Stade Velodrome, as good as confirming the
Anfield club’s progress to the last 16 of the Champions League, might have
felt like a watershed were it not among two or three already in Liverpool
colours that the season will give prominence to when the high-lights
packages are edited next May. But it evidently gave Torres himself quite an
rush of a adrenaline. He comes across as self-possessed and modest but he
feels confident “there will be many more like that, with better ones to
come”. He carries ominous form into this afternoon’s meeting with Manchester
United: four goals in the past four matches, and 12 so far in this, his
debut English season.
Most gratifying for Torres, as well as for a Liverpool manager under the most
intense scrutiny since he came to Anfield and for the club’s new investors
for whom the recruitment of Torres in the summer was the single strongest
statement of their ambition, is that he has found a groove so early. He had
come from a country once rather notorious for its footballers suffering
acute homesickness on being removed from their own pueblo; he had joined
England’s most decorated club in Europe having never played in the Champions
League; then there was the fee, £26.5m, having been paid on the assumption
that his goalscoring record from Atletico would improve in more
distinguished company.
His closest companions reckon that, for all that, Torres finds Anfield restful
compared with the turbulence of Atletico Madrid, the spotlight softer on him
and kinder. “He was at Atletico Madrid for a long time being the most
important player that Atleti had,” says Pepe Reina, the Liverpool
goalkeeper. “Here there are lots of players to share responsibility. At the
beginning it is difficult when you change country and team, but in a very
short time he has adapted.”
The new environment has struck Torres as different from what he was used to
because “there are lots of players here used to handling pressure, who have
won things before and they have the experience of the really important
matches. That will help players like me, it protects the new players. I am
very pleased about the way things are going on the pitch and that makes
everything easier off the field too.” That would not immediately include his
spoken English, which remains limited, though it is his target to have it
good enough to start to hold his own over lunch with Steven Gerrard and
Jamie Carragher “in the new year”.
Carragher will have plenty to say to him. The defender has found the arrival
of Torres stimulating, not just for maintaining Liverpool’s interest in the
two principal competitions but most mornings, at practice. “I mark him in
training and, yes, it is very difficult,” the defender says. “At the moment
he is as good as anything around. He’s not just one of the best players at
Liverpool, at the moment he is one of the best players in the Premier
League. I’m sure other teams won’t fancy playing against Torres. Manchester
United have got Rooney and Tevez and now we have got a player who is
probably in that bracket. It gives you hope that no matter how the game is
going there is someone who can produce something out of nothing.”
“It was a gamble,” acknowledges Rafa Benitez, the manager who endorsed the
large fee, though he says another club – outside England – had been prepared
to pay Atletico a full £6m more for the striker. “But it was not a gamble in
as far as we knew his mentality was really good. He can be a little bit shy
as a person but I think he has an inner confidence.”
For all his tender (23) years Torres has had to grow up fast. A star for Spain
at under16, a league debut for Atleti at only 16, and that, at a club not
only in the grip of its customary managerial chaos - the then president
Jesus Gil used to consume and spit out new coaches like aperitif olive
stones – and suffering the traumas of relegation. Torres, El Nino, would be
immediately feted as the leader of the rescue; or as the only form of
rescue. He was not yet 19 by the time folk were reckoning he had outgrown
the club and should leave before it suffocated him.
By 20, he was captain of what likes to think of itself as Spain’s third
biggest football institution. But he seems sensible. He says he appreciates
seeing a lot of his family, who visit Merseyside frequently, now he is at
Liverpool – he was still living with them until he turned 21. His sporting
life then was Atleti’s peaks of hope and troughs of despair, the odd
unfulfilling summer tussling in the InterToto Cup, ups and downs with
Spain’s national team where he has been both praised and jeered loudly,
sometimes in the space of three days. He has been an Atleti fan since
childhood, so there would be a part of Torres missing them. A large section
of Atleti supporters miss him too. It would be hard to argue strongly that
the present Atletico team do. They are performing rather well postTorres,
because of the replacements Liverpool’s money allowed them to buy. So, a
good move for all parties? Torres has a dozen goals already for Liverpool;
his record from the top division of La Liga stood at 61 in 138 matches. It
was those figures Benitez remembers when he talks of the “gamble” in this
expensive recruitment, and the suspicion that Torres’s career might end up
defined solely by spectacular volleys, virtuoso runs – like against
Marseilles – rather than the prodigious accumulation of goals, scruffy as
well as pretty.
Torres had a strong 2006 World Cup, at least until Spain reached their glass
ceiling and the experience accelerated his desire to move on.
From around that time he has looked more muscular or perhaps just readier to
impose himself more aggressively. “He has that physical strength you need
for England,” notes Benitez “With his speed and the power he has, defenders
will always finding it hard against him,” adds Javier Mascherano, the
Argentinian midfielder whose shared language has brought him close to Torres
over the last three months. “Liverpool needed someone like that and in him
they have found exactly what they were looking for. He can kill off games
and he has very quickly got used to the English style.”
Carragher has been struck not simply by Torres pace, so alarming to Marseilles
in midweek, and his skill in the duel, but also by his industry. “He works
very hard apart from his goals,” the English international continues. “He
reminds me a bit of Ian Rush the way he is always closing people down and
working the channels. We have had a great list of strikers over the years
and if he keeps going as he is then his name will definitely be up there. It
was a great bit of business by the club to get him because of his age. I
think he is on a six-year deal, so we will have him for his peak years and
it is something we have been lacking since probably Michael Owen. He is
unstoppable at the moment.”
Put it to Torres that his name is already finding its way into a chain that
includes the names Rush, Fowler and Owen, and he turns rather coy. “No, at
the moment you can’t compare me to them. I’ve still got to win things before
you can. One day, I hope I can be up there with all these great players,
like Rush and Dalglish.”
His Anfield history lessons have, naturally, emphasised fixtures against
United. His Madrid derbies would be something of a preparation, though not,
he would hope, an omen: he rarely scored for Atleti against Real. In games
against Barcelona, on the other hand, he would again and again make amends
and emerge the outstanding individual. “I know this, Man United is the game
people really look forward to, a really important one for the supporters,
and they can be decisive over the course of the season,” says Torres.
He would have to be selected, of course: “It is always nice to play these
games, but Rafa has four strikers to chose from and we are all getting
chances.” The rotation policy may grate on him as much as any player, but
sometimes it was helpful to reminded he was no longer lead actor in a
one-man team.
