Torres: An Intimate Portrait of the Kid Who Became King

Germany World Cup, described him as a great striker. The ingredients for success, this time, really do all seem to be there. Atlético, together with Barcelona, are the teams generating most expectations. Instead, it’s Fabio Capello’s Real Madrid that wins the league on the last day of the season. El Niño has already decided to leave. In seven seasons without winning a single trophy, he has scored 82 goals and seven in the Copa del Rey. He was the icon and standard-bearer of the team who, at seventeen, ‘knew how to take on the starring role and keep alive the hopes of an institution in its darkest hour. The administration’, writes Manolete-Manuel Esteban – journalist of sport daily newspaper,
AS
, and one of Atlético’s best-known supporters – ‘was dominated and hounded by the courts. The club’s enemies were taking advantage and no one gave any importance to what was happening on the pitch. His appearance on the scene led to an explosion and a breath of fresh air. He didn’t have any doubts about putting his professional future at risk, even when the directors asked him to help underwrite and ease the financial difficulties. He knew how to raise the hopes of the fans and declare that he would never wear the white of Real Madrid. His years were always presided over by performances of a high calibre and, above all, by being a kind of Robin Hood figure, who was trying to take a part of the popularity from the big clubs and give it to the less fortunate ones. In the end he needed a change of scenery to make his wishes come true.’

Chapter 14
He’s earned it the hard way
     
    Conversation with Mexico and former Atlético de Madrid manager, Javier Aguirre
    Following an afternoon in Madrid’s Las Ventas bullring to see his fellow countryman and bullfighter, ‘El Payo’
,
in action, followed by some
tapas
with friends, ‘El Vasco’ (‘The Basque’) Aguirre has a few moments to chat. It is almost midnight and he still has his case to pack. In the morning, he leaves for Mexico City, where, in a few days, he will be in the dugout for his first match in charge of the Mexico national team. On 3 April 2009, the Mexican Football Federation appointed him to succeed ex-England and Manchester City manager, Sven-Göran Eriksson. It is his second spell as manager of the national team. The first began in 2001 and ended after the side’s exit at the hands of the US from the 2002 South Korea and Japan World Cup after reaching the last sixteen. For the seven years in-between he lived his big Spanish adventure.
    It started in Pamplona with Osasuna, the team where Aguirre played briefly in 1986 before a broken leg put a premature end to his Spanish playing career. Returning as manager in 2002, over the next four seasons he took Osasuna to a Copa del Rey final and classification for the UEFA Cup. In 2006, thanks to a fourth place in the league, they qualified for the Champions League for the first time in the club’s history. An achievement that earned him a one-year contract with Atlético Madrid. ‘El Vasco’ Aguirre took up the challenge of returning the club to the upper reaches of
La Liga
and a place in Europe. He says of Fernando: ‘Any manager in the world would want Torres in his team. Who wouldn’t? Fernando is the standard-bearer of the team.’
    On 3 February 2009, when El Niño had been with Liverpool for almost two years, Aguirre was sacked after the club suffered a bad run of results. Fernando gave an interview in which he spoke positively of his former manager: ‘He’s probably been the team’s best manager in recent years, getting them into the Champions League, and no one can take that away from him. That’s why he was hired and that’s what he achieved. I don’t think he is the real culprit of this situation. That’s how football is.’
    Now it is his turn to talk about Fernando. With the Atlético uproar now in the past and with the relative calmness his experience and new post allows him, he recalls in measured tones El Niño’s final year in the red and white of Atlético Madrid.

What do you think now of Fernando?
     
    ‘I think he deserves all the good things that have happened to him. And when I say that, I’m referring to the advertising contracts, to playing in the Champions League, to battling on right until the end of the English season. He deserves it all because life hasn’t done him any favours. In the year that I was with him, I realised that he was a lad who was