Torres: An Intimate Portrait of the Kid Who Became King

is again injured and the second part of the season isn’t as productive as the first.
    Meanwhile, Torres has extended his contract up until the end of 2008. It’s somewhat less than what the board had wanted. It would have liked to renew it up until 2010 or even 2014. El Niño is one of the team captains: ‘It was difficult because of his age and because there were other players older than him in the dressing room but they helped him to be a good captain. They respected him and everyone listened to what he thought. He was the emblematic player and symbol of Atléti but he still didn’t consider himself a star and nor was he,’ recalls Manzano. ‘He was beginning to grow and mature a lot during the season. He’s always been someone who’s open to everything with an extraordinary human quality. If you had to pick out some things, I would choose his ability to surmount difficulties, his humility, his unselfishness and his ambition. The only bad point was his lack of experience and not pacing himself during matches.’
    Despite the good results, Gregorio Manzano lasted for just one season and in 2004–05, César Ferrando arrives. The manager changes but the club’s institutional crisis means there is no money to reinforce the squad. The key element in all this for Atlético is, once more, Fernando, who is twenty and a star. He is one of the most sought-after Number 9s in Europe and the idol of teenagers, mothers, and of the younger fans, who believe he will be bigger than all the club’s previous glories. He is a marketing man’s dream, selling everything from watches to footwear, from video games to beer, from breakfast cereals to jeans. One example is Pepe Jeans. Thanks to the Torres effect – charismatic, charming and dynamic – it increased its Spanish sales by 25 per cent. Torres is a model for fashion and women’s magazines. The rates for use of his image rise 75 per cent in three years.
    And he is the driving force behind Atlético’s commercial operations – 70 per cent of the replica shirts sold have his name on them. He earns 3½ million Euros a year, drives a metallic grey Porsche Carrera 4S (his first capricious buy) and is superstitious – so much so that every time things don’t go well, he changes his hairstyle. He goes to Olman, his hairdresser, who invents a style. From shaved head to punk look-alike, from spikey to coloured highlights. He likes to dress up in the latest fashions and, sometimes, when he can, he even goes to watch a fashion show. An elegant champion who does good business with his image to such an extent that they’ve started comparing him to David Beckham, the football pop star who arrived in 2004 on the other side of Madrid. But he wants to clarify that ‘Beckham sells a huge amount all over the world but if he stopped playing, his advertising income would also go down. Basically, the image of a footballer is built up starting with what he does on the pitch. For this reason, I would never not go to a training session because of a photographic shoot.’
    He doesn’t like politics but is fascinated by the people who go out into the street to protest against the war in Iraq or to condemn the Atocha bombings of 11 March 2004. He hopes they succeed in changing things. He’s a modern type, who believes in God but sees no problem with homosexual marriages, which the Spanish church vehemently condemns. As an adult, if he wasn’t a footballer he would have liked to be the singer of a rock group: ‘Someone capable of moving a lot of people, like footballers, only a rock star doesn’t have opponents.’
    In an interview with the Italian newspaper,
Corriere della Sera
, he even describes how he doesn’t like football: ‘I say it in all seriousness. It bores me to watch a match on TV. I’ve never seen one all the way through. I like to play. I love the match and the fans but everything that goes on behind the scenes – from the little I know about it – I don’t want to know. The television companies, which impose their own rules and economic interests, which overload the (sporting) calendar. At the end of the day, it’s only business and nothing to do with watching sport.’ A surprising response for someone who lives thanks to football and who enjoys a huge popularity.
    Fame continues to surprise him. ‘All the time. Above all, outside Spain. But football is now almost like a worldwide commercial.’ Difficult to live with? ‘At first I found it difficult. I was