Torres: An Intimate Portrait of the Kid Who Became King

and coaches who were changed too quickly … and football in the
Segunda Regional
.

Chapter 7
A born winner
     
    ‘How much do we give this lad?’
    ‘This little freckled one with the blond hair
    gets 10 plus one … an 11’
     
    The conversation takes place in June, 1995, in the Ernesto Cotorruelo sports facility in the Carabanchel district of Madrid. The protagonists: Manolo Briñas and Manolo Rangel. One is the deputy director of Atlético Madrid football school and the other is one of its coaches.
    The two find themselves, one summer morning, on three hard, bare playing surfaces, lost in the middle of a huge boulevard full of cars and in front of a row of sad-looking buildings. They have to select some youngsters to form part of the junior team, which will take part that August in an international tournament at Bierbeek, in the Brabant province of Belgium, a few miles from Leuven. Briñas holds the notebook, Rangel gives the points. He gives a score for each of the would-be footballers from one to ten but when that freckled one with the blond hair appears in front of them, the guidelines disappear.
    ‘After five minutes,’ recalls Antonio Seseña, today aged 66 and retired but then director of the Atlético Madrid junior players, ‘we told him, ‘Go and get dressed, lad.’ He looked surprised, he wanted to keep on playing, he thought he was no good, that he’d failed. He asked me, ‘Am I doing something wrong?’ On the contrary, he had completely won us over. We saw an intelligent lad, who moved well on the pitch, had pace and good technique as well, qualities which, at that age, really stand out.’
    ‘Yes, Fernando Torres at eleven was a very smart kid – fast, able to lose his marker and beat his opponent. Without having participated too much in the action, I realised that he was doing everything fantastically well. And above all, he seemed to me like a kid who wanted to be a footballer,’ explains Manolo Rangel, aged 55, who worked with the Atlético junior teams for twelve years.
    In that June of 1995, Fernando had already passed the first selection test to enter the ranks of Atlético. Like lots of other kids of his age, he had gone to the Vicente Calderón stadium, filled in the registration forms, and had been invited – along with 200 others – to go to the ground in the Tres Cruces park between Aluche and Carabanchel. An 11-a-side match to sort out what each of them was able to do, then after that another 22 kids and so on. ‘Victor Peligros, Antonio Arganda and I were there that day,’ recalls Briñas in his office at the Calderón. Behind him, and framed in a glass-fronted case, is one of Fernando’s shirts. It’s the one he was wearing on 23 February 2008, when he got a hattrick at Middlesborough. Alongside is a photo of an ecstatic El Niño, having just scored a goal for the Reds, and on it is written in felt-tip pen: ‘For my great friend, Manolo Briñas, a heartfelt embrace in return for all the affection that you have shown and continue to show for me, Fernando Torres.’ On re-reading this dedication, 77-year-old Briñas is visibly moved and points to the walls covered with cuttings describing Fernando and all the other youngsters from the Atlético junior teams who have ended up in the top division. The only exception is the Uraguayan Diego Forlán (formerly of Villarreal and Manchester United), whose impressive tally of 32 league goals last season was a huge factor in taking Atlético into the Champions League for the second year running, as well as earning him the Spanish
Pichichi
trophy and the European Golden Boot for the player with the highest number of league goals in Spain and Europe respectively.
    After this diversion, the veteran coach continues with the story of that team in the Tres Cruces park: ‘From those 200 youngsters, we had to choose 40. If I remember rightly, Fernando scored four goals but the coaches didn’t choose him for that. Apart from the goals, he was marked positively for his involvement in the game and for his unselfish attitude.’
    In the official test notes for that day, in strict alphabetical order, one can read, alongside the name Fernando José Torres Sanz: ‘Suitable (to be seen in our teams). He will be sent instructions.’ To be more precise, he would go to the Cotorruelo ground, where Manolo Rangel, some time later, would give him the mark of eleven.
    But why did Fernando end up taking his chances with Atlético and not Real