Torres: An Intimate Portrait of the Kid Who Became King

scoring a great goal against opponents like Chelsea and then getting applauded with an ovation. So many times, old and new team-mates have told him what it means to play at Anfield. The atmosphere, the fans, the emotion you feel when you come on to the pitch, the songs, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.
    But in the end they had said it was something that was difficult to explain, and that you had to feel it on your own skin. And it’s true that the sensations Fernando feels, coming down the steps, touching the club badge and standing on the green rectangle, are absolutely unique. He doesn’t know how to express himself. He’s happy but he doesn’t allow himself to get euphoric. ‘The goals are going to give me confidence, which will help me to adapt, but I still have more to do. I’ve only just arrived and the way of playing is very different. With goals, there’s much less pressure and I hope that they keep coming, but there’s still an awful lot more for me to do to be at the level of some of my team-mates and to adapt myself to the Premier League,’ he declares. He claims he doesn’t feel the pressure of being the most expensive signing in the club’s history, people have given him a warm welcome but he has to work, ‘because when you work, things happen.’
    Better to tread carefully at Liverpool, having been there a little over a month. His first training session at Melwood with his new classmates is on 11 July. He gets changed inbetween Gerrard and Voronin and realises that it’s true, he’s actually a Liverpool player, and that this will be his dressing room for the next few years. By the end of the first day, he’s discovered a lot. The media are not allowed into Melwood. In Spain, they call it training ‘behind closed doors’ and when Fabio Capello, then with Real Madrid, introduced it, he was flooded with criticism. Here it’s normal and the new arrival likes it because one can train in complete tranquillity, practise the game plan and the technical moves without a photographer trying to immortalise you in a fleeting moment, without some little problem ending up on the front page.
    And then there is the important, necessary and intense physical work under the guidance of Paco, who never tires of repeating it over and over again. And the manager’s technical lessons. At Melwood, they all have lunch together and very often players and technical staff stop to eat, a good way to check on what they’re eating – the gaffer is very strict regarding fats – but they are also moments for getting to know each other better. Rafa Benítez explains to Fernando his new role. He wants him to play in a different way to what he was doing at Atlético. More direct moves up the pitch, operating more deeply with fast movement to take advantage of his running. He doesn’t want him to drop too often to the wings or backtrack to create an attacking move. To provide him with playable balls, they think of Gerrard, Xabi Alonso and even Pepe Reina with his superlong deliveries. Rafa wants him to be the ultimate Number 9, like Ronaldo or Van Nistelrooy, always inside the opponents’ penalty area and not a second striker, which is how other managers like Luis Aragonés wanted to use him. He wants him to exploit the spaces that are created when a team advances and for him to get behind the opposing team’s defenders.
    It’s no easy thing to absorb all the tuition in one go, in the same way that it’s not easy to adapt oneself to the club, to the fans, to football ‘across the Channel’, to speaking English, to the city, to a new country, to the food and even to driving on the left. Fernando Torres applies himself with determination and commitment. When he arrived, they gave him a pile of DVDs and books about the story, the traditions and the great champions of the Reds. Among them there is even one about the Kop. And some time later, he admits that he has kept it and read it. He researched in depth because he himself grew up in Atlético and, as captain, he had the task of explaining the values of the club to every newcomer who had to understand the origins, the passion for the club colours, to know the famous champions of the past, so that they have the necessary reference points to avoid feeling like a fish out of water.
    While studying, he realises that he’s arrived at a club that is even bigger and more important than he imagined. A club which functions well, where everyone has a clear role, where no