Why Fernando Torres’ return to Atlético Madrid can revitalise the Kid
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Version 0 of 1. The Kid returns to the Calderón a man. Fernando Torres has rejoined Atlético Madrid more than 17 years after he played his first game for them, a tall, skinny 13-year-old with freckles who had recently joined the club’s youth system. After Chelsea formalised his switch to Milan, the Serie A side confirmed he will join Atlético on loan until 2016, when his contract at Stamford Bridge was due to expire. Alessio Cerci heads in the other direction, from Madrid to Milan. This is that rare deal when everyone is happy. It is seven and a half years since Torres left for Liverpool. His mind was made up after a soulless 6-0 defeat that confirmed a trend in which Atlético headed from crisis to crisis, never winning anything and never looking like winning anything either. The surprise, the club’s sporting director admitted, was not Torres had departed but that he had stayed so long. He was still young but he had completed his seventh season in the first team. He had scored 91 goals but also outgrown them. “I had to leave because my development was going in one direction and the club was going in another,” Torres said. Some will conclude the roles have been reversed. Under Diego Simeone, Atlético have won the Europa League, the Copa del Rey, and the league, and reached the final of the Champions League, in the past three years. Torres became an idol of Anfield, scoring 54 goals in his first three seasons. He finished third in the Ballon d’Or but he arrives home having scored once in 10 games at Milan and Chelsea were keen to get rid of him. Last season he scored five league goals; the seasons before that he got eight, six and one. Atlético could not be happier. “The tweet we were longing to write. It’s official. Torres will wear the red and white shirt again. #TorresHasReturned””, ran their Twitter feed on Monday morning. Germán Burgos, Atlético’s assistant coach, said a few days ago that it would be “wonderful” if they could bring him back. When Torres was last at the club, Burgos was his team-mate. So was Simeone. Torres described this move as a “dream come true”; he is “home at last”. It is hard to do justice to how much Torres means to Atlético and their supporters. He is from Fuenlabrada, south of Madrid, and played his first competitive game for them aged 17 in May 2001. He will probably play his last competitive game for them, too. He is 30 now but here he will always be “El niño”. In 2000, Atlético were relegated for the first time. The then owner Jesús Gil described it as “one little year in hell” but it turned out to be two. Torres made his debut in hell, light amid the darkness – the hope to which they clung. They won promotion and he scored 75 goals in the five first division seasons that followed. If they did not progress, it was not because of him and when he departed most understood. He was still one of them. Torres’ grandfather first took him to the Calderón and he identified with Atlético as much as they would come to identify with him. Few explained the club’s idiosyncrasies better, few internalised them better. Torres talked about being an Atlético fan who felt outnumbered and had almost always lost but would not hide; about rivals who do not “feel” their football like atléticos do. In an interview with the magazine Panenka last summer, Torres said: “Atlético has been my only home”. This decision to return has not been built solely on romance, which is not to say that there is no romance. The emotional component is important: the hope is that in finding his place, Torres can find himself again. This decision feels right; others did not. Torres admitted that leaving Liverpool, or indeed anyone, “mid-season” was “inadvisable”. The way it was handled hurt too – Liverpool were in “chaos”, Torres said, and he was right. There was institutional uncertainty and the team who suited him so well was dismantled. Rafael Benítez had gone, Xabi Alonso and Javier Mascherano left, and when Torres did likewise the blame was turned on him. “The [fans] were poisoned, sold a story that was not true,” he said. And so he went to Stamford Bridge, where he rarely seemed to fit in. He has hinted there may still be a story to tell about that and said in an interview with Lu Martín in El País in 2012, that his mindset momentarily changed, something slipped and it saddened him. “I had team-mates who didn’t care if the team won or lost because they weren’t playing [and] I never wanted to be like that,” he said. “But one day I discovered I was like them ... I wasn’t happy because I had got away from what I wanted to be. In a dressing room, the team mentality should not be lost.” At Atlético things will be different for him. “We will get the best out of him,” Burgos says. Simeone wanted to sign Torres last summer; six months later he has succeeded for a price that makes it virtually a no-risk move. Simeone has not been blinded by love. The headline statistics – those damning league goals versus league games tables – rarely take into account the fact that in the past four seasons 38 of Torres’ appearances have been from the bench, often a few minutes long. Nor has style been looked at. There have been successes, even if they have been easily forgotten. Torres admits he has had a more “secondary” role than he would have liked but there have been trophies at Chelsea. So too with Spain ,– world and double European champions, it was Torres’ goal that finally won them a major tournament, 44 years later. Simeone has taken all of that into account. He has watched, analysed and stayed in touch with his former team-mate. He believes Torres can add something to his side, that he still has much to contribute. He reckons the right team, environment and style, could still suit him. Of his first two years at Chelsea, Torres said: “Sometimes I thought, ‘I’ll run into space,’ and for 70 minutes I didn’t touch the ball.”. It was so different to what I was used to with Benítez that I was not comfortable and it showed.” Benítez built a superb counterattacking team round him at Liverpool, playing to his strengths, and the success was dazzling. Chelsea did not play that way but Atlético might – not in every game, not in every moment, but often. This is a different Torres but they believe he can still be useful Atlético have evolved this season but that run into space, lost with the departure of Diego Costa, is a weapon Simeone would like to recover and Torres is a player Atlético have wanted to recover too from the day he left. |