Torres: An Intimate Portrait of the Kid Who Became King

years. With Gil, Atlético have one league title and three Copas del Rey and finished in the second division for two years. With Gil, the ex-mayor of Marbella, the club has often teetered on the edge of bankruptcy and been the focus of numerous legal investigations. Gil ends up in prison. When he leaves, fed up with being insulted and accused of being the one responsible for all the club’s failings, he hands over the reins to his son, Miguel Ángel Gil Marín and film producer Enrique Cerezo … The club shares held by Jesús Gil are seized in connection with an investigation into fraud and falsification. Financially, the club is in ruins but he does not want to be singled out as the president who sells Fernando Torres or the Calderón to put things right.
    Jesús Gil had been like a father to El Niño: ‘I remember him with affection, his family treated me as if I was one of their own.’ Gil, who died on 14 May 2004, goes and so does Luis Aragonés. Just six matches from the end of the league, he says he can’t work as he would like to and has no intention of respecting his contract, which expires at the end of the season. Before going, has he changed his opinion of El Niño? Not at all: ‘Fernando Torres could be a very good footballer, who still has to correct some flaws,’ he says in the club magazine. ‘Right now, he’s performing well in the Primera Liga but, paradoxically, in almost all the matches where he hasn’t played, we’ve won. Irreplaceable? It’s very difficult for a player in a team to be like that but Fernando is certainly a very important element in front of the opposition goal.’ The warring between the two continues and it will resurface some years later in the national side.
    Gregorio Manzano arrives for the 2003–04 season from Mallorca, where he won the Copa del Rey. He declares immediately that he wants to put his priorities into the attack because that’s what the fans are demanding. He counts on a midfield notable for the presence of Cholo Simeone, who, after several years in Italy (Inter and Lazio), returns to Atlético, and on a left wing, where Musampa is expected to perform well. In attack, to support El Niño, there is the Greek, Nikolaidis:
    ‘Our objective was to consolidate our status and after that, fight to get as high up the table as possible. We had a good season and we surpassed our initial expectations, relative to our sporting and economic resources. The only thing that was missing was Europe. In the last game against Zaragoza, the team couldn’t manage a win and we missed out on the UEFA Cup through a lower goal average than Sevilla,’ as Gregorio Manzano, or ‘The Teacher’ as he was known, recalls today. He boasts ten years of Spanish first division management with more than 300 matches under his belt. Manzano, now back with Mallorca, hasn’t forgotten that year in Atlético, just as he hasn’t forgotten Fernando, with whom he maintains good relations.
    Going back to the beginning of that season, one should say that Torres avoided a goalscoring crisis thanks, above all, to the confidence of the manager, who has given him a starting place when neither his dribbling nor his shooting is working. It’s a situation from which he escapes only at the end of October. Against Manzano’s former side, El Niño finally unleashes himself and doesn’t stop hitting the net – so much so that halfway through the season, he is the first division’s top goalscorer with eleven goals. And at the end of the season – won by the Valencia of Rafa Benítez – Torres is the club’s top-scorer, only four less than league top-scorer Ronaldo.
    One of those goals is a masterpiece: ‘It is without a shadow of a doubt that great goal at Betis that gave us our 1-2 victory,’ explains Manzano. A move worth a slow-motion replay. It’s 2 November 2003 in the old Benito Villamarín stadium in the 40th minute. Atlético midfielder Jorge crosses the ball towards the centre. Torres, in a yellow ‘away’ strip, runs, loses his marker, neutralises the defender and lets fly. It’s an artistic action, harmonious and elegant, filled more with agility than energy. It compares to a cat lazily stretching its paws one in front of the other, like an exhibition performance of karate. Thanks to his soaring leap, Fernando touches the ball with the tip of his foot and directs it between the opposite post and crossbar. A goal of cinematic quality.
    Unfortunately, in February 2004, El Niño