Torres: An Intimate Portrait of the Kid Who Became King

spectacular moves. The first, he controls in the penalty area using his chest, gets round defender Noureddine Nybet with a lob and does a half-turn to score with a devastating left-foot shot. The second, he nutmegs Nybet, which dumbfounds Donato, leaving him to make a winning assist for Correa to score. The crowd gives him an ovation and his name rings out across the nearby Manzanares river and echoes through the surrounding neighbourhood.
    On 24 May, in the same stadium, he puts on another show. It’s the last minute of the second half when Torres begins warming up on the edge of the pitch. The fans have been demanding his appearance for some time and Atlético is losing 1-2 against Villarreal. Only he can save the situation. It’s true.
    On 70 minutes he shoots from outside the area, the ball just inside the angle between post and crossbar. Four minutes later, he scores the winning goal, a great left-foot shot, after a pass from Luis Garcia (who moved to Liverpool in 2004, returning to Atlético in 2007, the same year that Fernando went in the opposite direction). Poor Pepe Reina, then keeper with Villarreal and a future team-mate of his at Liverpool, has one of the worst afternoons of his career. ‘Imposing’, ‘formidable’, ‘marvellous’, are just some of the adjectives used to describe the 19-year-old’s display. They talk of the emergence in
La Liga
of a shining young talent. They cannot recall anything of its kind since the arrival of Raúl at Real Madrid. But El Niño has learned from Aragonés to avoid any kind of vanity like the plague, replying to all the praise saying:
    ‘People get carried away making comparisons but that’s a waste of time. I don’t know how one gets to be a star. But however one does, I still need to do it. I’ve only just started and we’ll see where I am when, like Raúl, I am 26 and playing international matches.’
    But the positive opinions don’t only come from the public. They are also being voiced by his team-mates. Demetrio Albertini, the midfielder who, with the Milan of Arrigo Sacchi and Fabio Capello, has won everything and more, explains: ‘He’s still a boy and has to mature, but he has talent. He’s going to be very big. In Italy he’s liked by Milan and Juventus. They talk a lot about him.’ And Fernando talks a lot with Demetrio, Atlético’s new signing: ‘He was talking about Milan, about Marco van Basten, who was my idol, he lent me tapes to watch him in action to explain to me his style of playing. And he always recommended me to learn everything I could before leaving.’
    The year 2003 is Atlético’s centenary. On 26 April 1903, a group of Basque students at a mine engineering college in Madrid founded a new football club as a branch of the Basque side, Atlético Bilbao. They initially played in blue and white strips, similar to those of Blackburn Rovers. But eight years later the main team in Bilbao and the Madrid branch had changed to red and white (similar to Southampton), one theory being that the new colours were cheaper because this combination was used to make mattresses and the leftovers could be converted into football shirts. It also helps explain why the club became known as
los colchoneros
(the mattress-makers). It’s those same stripes that earn an entry in the Guinness book of records when a flag measuring about 1 mile long by 8 yards wide is paraded through the streets of Madrid from the Neptune fountain to the Vicente Calderón stadium. It’s the main party for the centenary with lots of paella, fireworks and skydivers, together with leading local figures and even royalty in the form of Prince Felipe, the heir to the Spanish throne. It’s a pity that Atlético then go and lose 0-1 against Osasuna.
    Fernando, who comes 19th in a supporters’ survey to choose the best players in the club’s history, is not on the pitch. He’s taking part in the celebrations of a proud Atlético as an ordinary fan. ‘I have come up through the ranks, I know what it is to wear the red and white, what it means to be in this team,’ he says. Unfortunately, a tear in the fibres of a leg muscle is keeping him off the pitch for around a month.
    When he comes back, the club’s situation has changed and become even more difficult. Jesús Gil, the godfather figure of Atlético, resigns as president after sixteen years. During his time in charge, the club has had 31 managers, almost double what Liverpool or Manchester United have had in 100