Torres: An Intimate Portrait of the Kid Who Became King

learning Spanish, the fish and chip shops offer ‘All Day Tapas’, giant paella pans are on sale, flamenco is the dance schools’ favourite, The Cavern becomes The Caverna and youngsters playing football in the park offer their thanks to Torres with a ‘
Gracias
, mate.’ Fernando, in red jacket with his boxer dog on a leash, goes off smiling and looking pleased with himself. That’s how he appears in a commercial but it’s also the reality. At Liverpool, the lad who has come from Madrid is happy. He says so and repeats it in many interviews. With the Reds, he’s enjoying his football like never before. In the city of the Beatles, he’s discovered a winning mentality. He speaks of how his team-mates ‘do not go out on to the pitch hoping that they’ll win or praying for victory. They really expect to win. They have so much faith in their ability that they simply don’t consider the possibility of any other result.’
    Something new for him. Just as the football experience in England is enjoyable and new: ‘The fans are with your team to the death, win or lose. They are always behind their side and at away games as well. Normally in Spain, when you are substituted there is a huge amount of whistling yet here the crowd stand up and applaud you!’ And then there is Benítez, the manager who pampers him and teaches him new things each day, and there is the captain who is showing him what it means to be the team leader at a great club.
    To sum up, he is enthusiastic about the choice he has made. Because at Liverpool, freed from the game he played at Atlético, he doesn’t feel like a star who has to deal with everything – the good and the bad – but just an important player along with lots of others. The only regret is that he’s had to leave his country, because in Spain they realised what he was worth. A month later, the fresh respect of the Spaniards will become devotion and eternal gratitude.

Chapter 19
He’s going to stay
     
    Conversation with former Liverpool player and manager, Kenny Dalglish
    He hasn’t lost his Scottish accent. It’s hard and dry, while at the same time, takes on a brusque tone. Apart from that, ‘The King’ or ‘The Legend’ as everyone calls him, is a normal person – pleasant, informal, very gracious and a bit shy. He’s not a great one for talking but when he does, it’s on an informed, friendly and helpful basis. He shuns high-sounding words and concepts and prefers to call a spade a spade to explain how he sees things. And at the time of writing, it has been announced that he is returning to be a part of Rafa Benítez’s technical team in an advisory capacity, developing young players and sporting reports. News which all of Anfield would welcome with enormous pleasure. Because Kenneth Mathieson Dalglish, who was 58 in March and born in Dalmarnock, Glasgow, is top of the list of 100 Players Who Shook The Kop. Between 1977 and 1991, with the Reds, he won the unimaginable as both player and player-manager. He scored a fantastic 173 goals (added to the 112 he scored between 1969 and 1977 wearing the green and white of Celtic).
    He was also witness to the most tragic moments of modern football: on 29 May 1985 the final against the Juventus of Michel Platini, with 39 bodies on the field of play, and on 15 April 1989, the Hillsborough disaster, with its burden of 96 dead. He has brought excitement to crowds across Europe. Apart from Liverpool, he has managed Blackburn Rovers, Newcastle United and Celtic. But he maintains that he has never felt himself to be a legend and that it’s others who create legends. He has similar biographical details to Fernando. As a small boy at school, he began playing in goal, he was also a striker, his sign of the Zodiac is also Pisces, and he was also the Reds’ most expensive signing. But for King Kenny, all this is just coincidence. What is certain is that he gave his blessing to Torres immediately after his second hat-trick. ‘This boy,’ he said, ‘is the best buy that any club in Europe has made this season.’

And what does he think now? What’s the best match that Fernando Torres has had during his two years at Liverpool?
     
    ‘There’s not really one game for me, it’s just what Fernando is. He seems very mature for his age. He seems someone that a lot of Spanish players will look up to as a leader. On the football pitch, for Liverpool, he’s certainly made a massive contribution. He’s just scored his 50th goal