Torres: An Intimate Portrait of the Kid Who Became King

same ritual. He gets on the team bus listening to very loud music through the earphones of his iPod, and he gets off the bus in the same way. And he recalls a meeting with another old man, in May at Las Rozas, La Ciudad del Fútbol, where the Spanish national side was preparing for Euro 2008: ‘Are you the one who scored that goal?’ Torres asks. Marcelino Martínez, the Zaragoza forward who clinched the European Championship victory for Spain at home in 1964 against the USSR – the first and last major win for Spain in 100 – looks at him and responds: ‘Yes, I am. Let’s hope you can do the same and achieve something really great in Austria.’ Fernando thinks about this for days – he wants to be the new Marcelino.
    In the dressing room, he knows that the Championship is slipping from his grasp. There are only 90 minutes left and he still hasn’t managed to make his mark in the tournament. He’s certainly played well, but he’s only scored one goal, whereas Villa – who will win the Golden Boot – has scored four and Güiza, a substitute, has notched up two. Yet again, despite an outstanding season at Liverpool, Torres has not become the national hero he longs to be. But there’s still the final to come – the most important game. He leaves the dressing room and, as always, stands behind Sergio Ramos with a face that indicates he wants to be left alone. Don’t touch me. But the Wise Man of Hortaleza is ready for a joke, as Torres recounts a year later:
    ‘For several days before the final match with Germany, the gaffer didn’t stop talking about Wallace. At the beginning we were all looking at each other not knowing who was he talking about. Until we realised he was talking about Michael Ballack. Then he told us that he knew his name but that he called him Wallace because that’s what he felt like calling him. But if you know Luis, you can imagine the actual expression he used. It didn’t stop there, though. When we were in the tunnel leading to the pitch, Aragonés went on in front of us, winked in our direction, and went to Ballack. He said to him, in Spanish, “Good afternoon, Mr Wallace”, and went on speaking to him for a while. The German didn’t understand a word and Aragonés didn’t understand what Ballack was saying to him, either. We couldn’t help it, but we were laughing our heads off as we went out to play the final.’
    A nice way to start the most important game of your life …
    And then, in the first fifteen minutes of the game, Spain stutter. They’re uptight and can’t reproduce the form they’ve shown up to this point. On the pitch, in the stadium and across the country – for once crazy about its team – they fear the worst, that the giants in white shirts will slot home a couple of goals without even trying and finish the game before it’s started. But Spain get their act together with the help of Torres. In the 23rd minute Sergio Ramos crosses the ball from the right and Torres leaps up for a header, hitting the ball full-on. He doesn’t know how he manages to do it, given that Mertesacker is two heads taller than him, but El Niño manages all the same and the ball hits the post. It could have been the first goal – it will be just the beginning of Spain’s recovery. The clock in the Happel stadium shows the time as eighteen minutes past nine and on the pitch, 33 minutes have been played. Marcos Senna, the man from Sao Paolo, steals the ball in midfield. He looks around and sees Xavi through a crowd of German players. He’s far from Mertesacker and next to Frings. The Barça player sends a pass into space, where, from behind, Fernando is arriving at speed. Good control and past Philipp Lahm. The Number 16 looked to have had it under control. ‘Xavi’s pass was spectacular but Lahm was already in a good position,’ Torres will explain later: ‘If he had gone a bit to the right the ball would have been for the keeper, but I think that maybe he doesn’t have a good understanding with Lehmann. He gets too confident, he relaxes … This gives me a fraction of a second in which I am able to move to the other side and seize the opportunity to shoot. Maybe if the pitch had been dry I could have tried bending it but the ball skates across and enters just inside the post. I knew it was going to go in.’ It’s the goal he’s been dreaming about. Fernando Torres puts his thumb in his mouth like a dummy. It’s dedicated to his nephew, Hugo, the son of Israel,