Torres: An Intimate Portrait of the Kid Who Became King

League, Torres explains:
    ‘To play against them is nothing special for me. It would be special if the other team is Atlético. Still, I’m looking forward to it because it will be a way of going back to Madrid, to play in a stadium where I’ve never won and against a big team. But I’m sure we’ll win the tie.’
    Declarations that were repeated in the sport dailies of Madrid with front-page headlines like ‘We’re going to eliminate Madrid’ from
Marca
, all of them picking holes in El Niño, because what he was saying was true – in seven matches at the Santiago Bernabéu (Real Madrid’s ground) he had never scored.
    The first occasion was during the 2002–03 season. The game hadn’t even started when Fernando Hierro, the Real Madrid captain, made him understand how certain things were done. He went up to the eighteen-year-old in the red-and-white striped shirt, then Atlético’s bright new hope, and asked him: ‘What’s up, son? Didn’t you sleep well last night?’ Torres didn’t score and the match finished in a 2-2 draw. The following year, Madrid won 2-0. In 2004–05 it was a scoreless draw and in the next season’s fixture, the white shirts of Madrid chalked up a 2-1 victory. A year later, in Fernando’s final season in Spain, it was another draw, this time 1-1. He achieved a goal only once, on 2 January 2002, when he got past reserve keeper, Carlos Sánchez García. But it was only a friendly.
    Maybe, for Torres, it was a case of ‘stage fright’ – a condition referred to by the former Argentina player (and former Real Madrid player, manager and then Sporting Director), Jorge Valdano, to describe the apprehension that seems to grip visiting team members when they play in a famous stadium. But it didn’t stop with the stadium: in the 10 league encounters that El Niño played against Real Madrid wearing the shirt of Atlético, he never won. He scored just once against his great city rivals, at home in the Vicente Calderón stadium, on 24 February 2007, in an encounter that the Atlético side dominated (against a Real Madrid side managed by Fabio Capello, which that year went on to win the league). Torres scored in the 11th minute, then various opportunities and disallowed goals followed. But, as on so many other occasions, they let victory slip from their grasp, this time by allowing Real to equalise through Gonzalo Higuaín. To sum up, Real Madrid is Fernando’s
bête noire
. A typical view is that he was a jinxed striker against Real. But this time, things would be different …
    Álvaro Aberloa maintains there is no need to remind him about his goal drought in the Bernabéu: ‘Fernando says he’s fired up enough on his own. There’s no one more keen to score in the Bernabéu, to have a good game and to win the tie than him. Even Rafa Benítez is confident, saying Torres would score. Why? ‘Because there’s always a first time.’
    But how does Fernando himself view the encounter? He is convinced that ‘small details or an individual action will decide who goes through to the next round’. He knows that Madrid will be coming out in ‘better footballing shape than they have been’.
    And that was the main topic of all the debates. But when, on 19 December 2008, at Nyon in Switzerland, UEFA drew Real Madrid and Liverpool against each other, the situation was very different. Bernd Schuster, the German manager of Real Madrid at the time – who’d won the 2007–08 league title – had just been driven out of the job because of a run of bad results, including the team’s elimination from the Copa del Rey (King’s Cup) by Real Unión de Irún of the Second Division. Taking Schuster’s place in the dugout was Juande Ramos, ex-manager of Sevilla and, more recently, Tottenham Hotspur. His first task was to take on Barcelona away in the league at the Camp Nou, where they were beaten 2-0. This meant that, after fifteen games and halfway through the season, Real were in sixth position, twelve points behind the leaders, Barcelona.
    The atmosphere was very different in Liverpool, where the Reds were top of the table with a two-point advantage over Chelsea, and with Manchester United even further behind. After nineteen years of abstinence, it really looked like this would be the year they would win the Premier League. Everything was going extremely well and the book-makers were offering short odds on a Liverpool title. If that wasn’t enough, Madrid were immersed in an institutional