Torres: An Intimate Portrait of the Kid Who Became King

season?
     
    ‘Well, I think we’ve improved as a team but if we’re not winning titles one can’t say that it’s been a good season. We always have to try to win trophies and this year that hasn’t been the case, but what we have done is beat the club points record and we’ve only lost two league games. We’ve achieved a lot and we have fought right to the end to try to win the Premier League. We can be proud of what we’ve done but we’re still one rung below Manchester United. We have a Champions League place but no titles and we’re not happy about this. Nevertheless, the atmosphere in the dressing room is good and we have the feeling we have improved. I think that big things will be happening to us in the coming years.’

How is Torres seen from the perspective of the Liverpool goal?
     
    ‘He’s a player that makes all of us a little better. He has skill, speed and directness, which all help the team. For those who play around him, he makes their passing easier and he can turn a bad ball to his advantage. For me, from behind, the counter-attacks that we have practised are a lot easier when I can take advantage of his speed. It’s something we have talked about, we know each other well and we know when to do it in a match. In a given moment, I can find him with a ball behind the opponents’ defence
.’

And as an adversary?
     
    ‘Let’s just say I have suffered considerably. While I was at Villarreal, he scored against me on various occasions. It’s strange because the people who’ve scored most against me are him and Villa and now they two are good friends. They are footballers who, when you play against them, you always suspect that something bad’s going to happen and Fernando is one of those. I don’t know exactly how to explain it but it’s a feeling of danger. When he has the ball, your goal isn’t safe.’

Since when have you known each other?
     
    ‘I got to know Fernando in the national Under-21 side, we were both there but it’s really been in Liverpool where I’ve had the pleasure to really get to know him, as a person, and a close friend.’

What is the quality that strikes you most about Fernando?
     
    ‘His ambition. Yes, he is a very ambitious player, and for that reason he comes out on top. He’s never content to sit back with what he has, he’s always trying to improve himself. At all moments, in each match, he looks for the things that haven’t worked out, he studies errors he’s made and works very hard to do it better the next time.’

Torres is a star of the team?
     
    ‘Yes, Steve and Fernando are our stars and that’s how it should be because they really are the two players who make the difference. Fernando has created a place for himself amongst the Liverpool greats because he’s very charismatic, a good guy, a warm guy, a worker and that’s how the people of Liverpool see him and they really appreciate him.’

And he’s also the ‘pin-up boy’ of the team …
     
    ‘That’s not how he appears to me. Men are not my thing but I understand that Fernando has that attraction. He’s tall, strong, handsome and he’s got hair – what’s more it’s blond – not like me!’

Chapter 24
Atlético de Madrid 1 Liverpool 1
     
    22 October 2008
    No, El Niño isn’t here tonight. Not on the pitch and not in the stands of the Vicente Calderón stadium. The previous week in Brussels, at the King Baudouin stadium, against Belgium, his luck runs out. Twelve minutes into the game the Number 9 of Spain’s national side feels an intense pain in his thigh. He pulls up and asks to go off. At the end of the game (1-2 in Spain’s favour) Fernando leaves, head bowed, without speaking to the journalists waiting for him. His return home to Atlético the following week for a Champions League tie is now in doubt. The verdict, which comes the next day, leaves no room for appeal: a small tear in his right hamstring. The same problem he suffered back in August. The prognosis: three weeks out.
    Enrique Cerezo, the president of Atlético, invites him anyhow through Rafael Benítez. His manager gives the green light but Fernando says he won’t be able to be there. The insignia of gold and diamonds that his ex-team-mates have wanted to give him to recognise his years of service to the club will have to wait for another time. On his website he expresses his gratitude and apologises to the fans of his former club, saying: ‘After meeting with the manager, the doctor and