Torres: An Intimate Portrait of the Kid Who Became King

lad
     
    Conversation with Spain manager, Vicente Del Bosque
    A quiet man, a coach and father-figure, who took charge of the national team following the euphoria of the victory at Euro 2008 and who knew how to bring everyone back to earth. While not denying the legacy left by his predecessor, Luis Aragonés, he has achieved the team’s qualification for the 2010 South Africa World Cup well ahead of schedule.
    The national team is the latest stage of a long sporting career: ‘We’ll see when it finishes, maybe after the World Cup, who knows … Let’s hope up until the next European Championship, if things go well.’ Then he will close the door on soccer, a world he first entered in 1 August 1968, when he left his home city of Salamanca to join the Real Madrid junior team.
    At the club’s former Ciudad Deportiva training complex, he learned the skill of being an attacking midfielder from players such as Pirri, Grosso and Velásquez. He came up through the ranks with the ‘ye-ye’ generation of players from the 1960s. They were dubbed the ‘ye-ye’ generation because of the ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’ chorus in the Beatles’ song, ‘She Loves You’, after four members of the team were photographed in Beatles wigs for sport daily,
Marca
. It was this group of players that had won the club’s sixth European Cup in 1966. He also played with the
Quinta del Buitre
(or ‘Vulture’s Cohort’ team from the 1980s, which derived its name from its top-scoring player, Emilio Butragueño). Wearing the white of Madrid between 1975 and 1984, he won five league titles and four Copas del Rey (King’s Cups). He was on the losing side in the famous 1981 European Cup final against Liverpool, which affected him deeply.
    But from this disappointment he recovered well when, as manager, he brought the Real Madrid of the
galácticos
(so-called because the team included world-famous star players such as Zidane, Figo and Ronaldo) two Champions League titles (2000 and 2002), a European Super Cup and an Intercontinental Cup (both also in 2002). All in four seasons – and that is without counting the titles won in Spain.
    It was a managerial skill acquired under the Yugoslav schooling of Vujadin Boskov and Miljan Miljanic (two of the managers of Real Madrid between 1974 and 1982). ‘Bigotón’ (‘big moustache’), as he was called because of the facial whiskers that give him a likeness to Inspector Maigret, knew how to manage in a calm and friendly way a dressing room where the egos of the champions were as inflated as hot-air balloons. How? Behaving ‘like a good father who draws the line, sets an example, tries to convince without imposing himself and who allows a freedom within certain limits. I don’t like to spend the whole day waving a stick.’ Secrets? ‘Don’t try to be too clever or tell the players the absolute truth every day.’ And now it’s time for the ultimate test, and perhaps the most difficult.
    Wearing the national team tracksuit, he is breakfasting in the Ciudad del Fútbol de Las Rozas training complex and chatting with his assistants. Del Bosque talks about Torres – now an essential element in the Spanish forward line – in his usual good-natured way: ‘Fernando already has a brilliant career. He began very young at Atlético de Madrid, where he had been a focal figure for many years. I think that he has benefited a great deal by going to England to play football, to a well-organised club like Liverpool, where he is alongside a manager and other players with considerable experience. He’s had very good runs, and in the national team as well, and he still has a great future ahead of him …’
    Without further ado, he begins to talk in more depth about a youngster he’s known for some time, when he was an opponent in the Madrid city derby.

What was your opinion of him when he was here at Atlético?
     
    ‘Here, Torres didn’t enjoy the best years of Atlético Madrid. He had too much pressure, was made captain too soon, he didn’t have that space as a youngster, the time to develop without feeling under pressure or protected by more-established team-mates.’

How do you explain the fact that he has doubled his goal tally and his scoring ability since moving from Atlético to Liverpool?
     
    ‘Likewise, I think it’s down to the environment where he is playing his football. Atlético isn’t the same as Liverpool. The environment, his team-mates and Liverpool’s presence in Europe – all