Graphic: Battle for Europe

Trusting a footballer with a decision over his fitness might be considered roughly equivalent to asking a teenager to preside over his own driving test. When the match in question is an emotional reunion with his former club, the danger is that common sense flies out of the window and down the street, so Fernando Torres, the Liverpool forward, will be urged to engage his head rather than his heart before declaring himself fit to face Atlético Madrid this evening.

Torres has missed Liverpool’s past five matches with a hamstring injury and has encountered some discomfort in training in recent days, but Rafael Benítez, the manager, will nonetheless trust the forward’s judgment when it comes to a fitness test today. “If Torres is confident and wants to play, he will play,” Benítez said at Anfield yesterday. “We have to decide if he is fit or not, but the main word will be the player’s. Sometimes players can be desperate to play, so you have to be careful, but, in this case, I think that he has some experience.”

Torres is also level-headed and low on ego, but the attraction of playing against Atlético, the club where he became captain and talisman before his teens were out, cannot be underestimated. A place on the bench is most likely, but his presence should not be considered essential, given that Liverpool have seven points from their first three games in group D and are firmly expected to progress along with Atlético. Indeed, either team could secure qualification for the knockout stages this evening by winning at Anfield if PSV Eindhoven lose to Marseilles in the group’s other fixture.

On the whole, Liverpool have coped well without Torres, at least until their profligacy was punished in the final stages of a 2-1 defeat away to Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday, and one reason for that has been the form of Dirk Kuyt. The Holland forward does not have the elegance, the technique or the pace of his Spanish counterpart, but Kuyt, with four goals in the past five Premier League matches, has been as influential as any Liverpool player this season and is eager to ensure that the setback at White Hart Lane is quickly forgotten.

“A lot of people are talking now about the pressure being on us and how we might react to losing for the first time, but, for us, nothing has changed,” Kuyt said. “During the unbeaten run, we were going out believing it would take something pretty special to beat us, and that remains the same. Other people can ask questions and raise doubts as much as they like, but our confidence and belief is not affected. We all want to be contenders for all the main trophies and there is a really good feeling among the players that we can do something this season.”

If there is a sense at Liverpool that the next few years will bring silverware, Kuyt is eager to ensure that he is a part of that success. The 28-year-old is in the final two years of his contract at Anfield and Benítez, with another of those calls for urgency from a divided and dysfunctional board, said yesterday that the situation “has to be addressed before the new year”. Daniel Agger, the Denmark defender, is in the same situation and so is Benítez, who in recent weeks has struggled to conceal his dismay at the lack of a contract offer.

Kuyt seems rather more relaxed about the prospect, but he, too, is eager for Liverpool’s American owners, who, contrary to their public protestations, are preoccupied with trying to offload the club at a profit, to open contract negotiations with his representatives. “I’m really happy here and I want to stay, but so far there has been no talk of a new contract,” he said. “Hopefully that will come in the next few months.” Another goal or two this evening would help his cause, particularly if it allows Benítez to keep Torres on the bench and restrict him to the cameo that would send both sets of supporters home happy.

Rumours have swept Merseyside that Diego Maradona could make an appearance at Anfield this evening after his appointment as coach of the Argentina national team. Liverpool officials said that they were not aware of any plans the 48-year-old may have to attend the game, but, with two of his country’s finest players, Javier Mascherano, of Liverpool, and Sergio Agüero, of Atlético, in direct opposition, it is easy to see why Maradona may be tempted to Merseyside.

The visit of Atlético to Anfield could be of particular interest to Maradona given his close relationship with Agüero, who is the boyfriend of Giannina Maradona, Diego’s youngest daughter. The couple are expecting a baby boy in February, with Enrique Cerezo, the Atlético president, already joking that “he will be our youngest signing ever”.