Fernando Torres

[Buzzo]

Yeah, I don’t blame him for leaving. It was gutting at the time. But we were ****.

[Mr Pink]

Obviously we’d always have been gutted to see him leave, but if he went to a different league, wherever he went would have been my second team, and I’d be cheering him on. He went to chelsea ffs- especially at a time when our rivalry with them was very bitter, meeting in Europe a lot, etc.

It would be like going out with a girl for 3 years or so... then shagging someone else and leaving her for this new skank in London. You wouldn’t expect her to remember ya with fond memories cos the 3 wonderful years ya gave her. It was consolation that he effectively caught the clap at chelsea...

[Imy]

‘Liverpool were my family but they hated me. It was very painful’

Fernando Torres opens up to Henry Winter about why he felt he had no option but to leave Anfield — and how Chelsea drained him of confidence

Henry Winter
, Chief Football Writer
Tuesday September 15 2020, 5.00pm, The Times

It is impossible to think of Liverpool’s upcoming trip to Chelsea without thinking of Fernando Torres, that wonderfully skilful and direct goalscorer who so controversially moved from Anfield to Stamford Bridge in 2011. Torres was at his beloved Atletico Madrid’s Wanda Metropolitano Stadium today, launching the documentary about his life, Fernando Torres: The Last Symbol, and happily taking a call to discuss the two English clubs in his life. It’s quite a story.

It all began in 2007, when he left Atletico for £20 million to join fellow Spaniards Rafa Benítez, Xabi Alonso, Pepe Reina and Álvaro Arbeloa at Anfield. “One of the reasons I decided to go to Liverpool was because Rafa was there,” Torres says. “He was calling me almost every day to show me the project. Xabi, Álvaro, Pepe, everybody was calling me, so that makes me feel like I’m going somewhere I can adapt.

“I started asking and reading about the Liverpool history. I didn’t know how huge Liverpool were. I could see quickly the relationship between supporters, players and club and it was like a family and this is what I needed. I was going to leave Atletico for the first time in my life, moving to a new country, I didn’t speak the language and was by myself. I needed to feel welcome and warm, not just at home with Pepe and all the Spanish guys but also in the club and on the pitch. Liverpool had all the values that I needed to make the decision to leave home. Liverpool was a perfect fit.”

The most perfect synchronicity came with Steven Gerrard, so important in so many of Torres’s 81 goals in 142 appearances. “As an icon of Liverpool, it was difficult to talk with him at the beginning,” Torres says of Gerrard. “I was not brave enough. I was like, ‘Wow, Steven Gerrard is my team-mate!’ I had so much respect for him. Being able to play with him in training and games — I couldn’t believe it.”

Torres quickly knew when Gerrard got the ball to make the run. Gerrard would find him with one of those drilled passes. Torres marked his Anfield debut by taking a Gerrard pass and scoring against Chelsea. It became a familiar theme. “He made my game complete,” Torres says. “Everything that I needed was him, just everything in one player. I didn’t need to ask for the ball any more. The only thing I needed to do is run into the space all the time because he was perfect for my game. It was a joy to play with him.

“It was completely natural understanding. In Atletico, I spent a lot of time talking with the No 10 or the midfielders to say, ‘When you receive the ball there I will make that run here,’ but with Steven I didn’t need to talk with him. Everything was natural. It was like I’d been playing with him all my life.

“I could see that Steven thought that I could be the best in the world. That coming from him was huge for me. I could become the best in the world only because he thought that it was possible.”

In 2010, Torres became a world champion with Spain, and he credits Gerrard with his development. “I was the player that I was thanks to him. If Steven was not on the team those years in Liverpool, I’m sure I wouldn’t have scored so many goals and play at the level I did.”

Benítez’s tactics also suited him. “For the style of football he wants to play he needs a player like me with my conditions: quick, sharp, powerful who is good at defending, making runs and helping the team. I fit perfectly for the system he wants to play and, with Steven behind me, it was perfect.”

He was also swiftly embraced by the Kop. “I understood really quick what Liverpool fans wanted to watch: people who work hard 100 per cent, run after every ball, play with pace and giving them something to enjoy. I give 100 per cent, always fighting for every ball, being the player that all the fans want to watch, a guy giving his all.”

He loved match day, walking from the cramped old dressing room, touching the ‘This Is Anfield’ sign before emerging and looking right to the Kop. “Anfield is full of ‘mythics’, the sign ‘This Is Anfield’, the small dressing room with the hangers very low. In every corner of Anfield you have a story, something that people from the club tell you about, the hangers from [Bill] Shankly or [Bob] Paisley. I love that.

“I missed that in the modern football, where everything’s new, everything’s huge, new stadiums. I loved Anfield because everything was different, even now with the new stand every corridor has a story, every room has a story. It was fantastic for me to be involved in the club’s history. That makes me understand how big and important the club and the responsibility you have with that shirt on.”

So why did he go to Chelsea in January 2011? “It was very difficult to leave,” Torres begins. He returned from the World Cup in South Africa the previous year as a winner, and wanting to amass trophies with Liverpool. His discontent began under Tom Hicks and George Gillett, the owners. “They were selling the club, I don’t know what they were doing because they were not working for [the best interests of] Liverpool. They don’t want any good things for Liverpool. They destroyed the project we had very quick. [Javier] Mascherano, Alonso and Benítez left. They started bringing in young players. They started changing all the staff, physios, doctors.

“They told us they wanted to build something in the next eight to ten years. I was there listening to everything and saying, ‘OK, and what about me? I left my home, my former team, because I was sure that Liverpool could be the place where I won trophies and you are telling me that we need ten years. I don’t have ten years. I need to find somewhere where I can win trophies.’ I was in the middle of this disaster that the directors were doing.”

In October 2010, Hicks and Gillett sold the club to John W Henry and Tom Werner, who tried to keep Torres. He went in one day to see Damien Comolli, the new director of football strategy, and was surprised that “after one hour everything was in the media”. Kenny Dalglish, the then manager, spoke to Torres and tried to persuade him to stay but the striker submitted a transfer request. He was pilloried in the media.

“They needed to find ‘a guilty one’ and to turn the story for everybody to blame me,” Torres continues. “I don’t think I deserved that. It was not the best way to leave the club. Every time that I went back to Anfield to play with Chelsea all the fans were booing me. I felt Liverpool was something similar to my family and they were hating me. It was very painful. I used to read everything, in the papers and online. The fans online hated me. They called me all the names. There was this guy called 'Chris' who used to call me a cunt every single day. It was very hurtful. They would call me a 'vole cunt' - I didn't even know what it meant but it hurt a lot.

But if I were a Liverpool fan, and I read everything that the media are writing about the reason I left, maybe I would boo the player. But with time Liverpool fans and myself are friends again.

“I decided on Chelsea because I thought they are the club that will give me trophies. At that time Man City were building the club they are right now and I thought that maybe they needed more time. When I saw Chelsea with [Frank] Lampard, [John] Terry, [Didier] Drogba, Ashley Cole and Petr Cech, all those big stars, I was sure their best moment in football still didn’t happened for them. I was sure they will win the Champions League. A generation that good cannot finish without winning a big thing.

“I knew Chelsea was a different club [to Liverpool and Atletico], probably very cold because it’s full of stars and egos, but I also was a top player so I thought I could fit in very well.”

He struggled, though. “Maybe leaving in January didn’t help because the squad is done, it is difficult to fit in.” Emotionally too. “I always needed that feeling of family. I need to feel part of a dressing room and spend time with them, go out for dinner, or with the families, with the children. I didn’t have that at Chelsea.

“My first six months were really bad and I went into myself, like a protection. I didn’t talk with anyone. For the first time in my career I didn’t score goals and I lost the way I used to play. Also the injury of the knee, but I don’t blame anyone. It was my fault that I was not able to play in a good way consistently.

“I had very good moments for Chelsea but I was not consistent. In a big club if you’re not consistent you’re out of the team. I was sure that I could still be a top player but not there. You could see after, when I moved back to Atletico, I reached the high level again because it’s matter of confidence, of something mental.”

He still has good memories, winning the Champions League in 2012, and the appreciation of Lampard’s quality. “I knew he would become a manager, 100 per cent. He’s one of the most intelligent people I’ve met in football. Great professional. Everybody knows he was a top player but a top professional too, which is not the same. Lampard’s a guy who always worked really hard and looked after himself very well. He knew everything. He was always aware of everything in training, about physical conditioning, about tactics, techniques. He has the character of being a leader.

“You could see how good he did in his first season in a very difficult season for them. They lose Eden Hazard [to Real Madrid], they couldn’t sign any players, he played young players and then they qualify for Champions League. A fantastic and brilliant season and they’re building a really good squad now. I don’t know if it will be this year but in the next two or three years Chelsea will be a top contender again.”

His thoughts will be on the Bridge on Sunday. For now, they turn briefly across London to Tottenham Hotspur and to José Mourinho, his old manager at Chelsea. Torres knows that Mourinho is being criticised but calls for patience. “He’s a top manager. I learnt a lot from him. He needs time to do his work. I’m sure if he has time in Tottenham he will do really well, much better than everybody’s expecting now. He’s also the kind of manager that when the pressure is higher, and with everybody’s maybe thinking that he’s not working any more, he gives 100 per cent and even more.

“He’s very good face-to-face. He controls really well the dressing room and he controls really well the egos. That’s why when he is managing a top club with top players he’s great. If you don’t have those egos — maybe you can see now in Tottenham — it’s more difficult for him because he’s a fantastic manager when he has players with ambitions because he has the same.”

Mourinho features in Fernando Torres: The Last Symbol on Amazon Prime (full disclosure: The Times has also contributed). “It was a chance for me to explain my story,” the 36-year-old says. “Everything I went through since I was a 17-year-old kid who makes his debut for Atletico until the last day I decide to finish football in Japan [at Sagan Tosu last year]. I can tell everybody my part of the story, not what the media wants to talk about my story. I hope that kids can learn something about all the sacrifice that you have to do to play football at the highest level, and how hard it is to say, ‘It’s finished.’ ”

Fernando Torres: The Last Symbol will launch exclusively on Prime Video on Friday, September 18

[Kenneth]

‘Liverpool were my family but they hated me. It was very painful’

Fernando Torres opens up to Henry Winter about why he felt he had no option but to leave Anfield — and how Chelsea drained him of confidence

Henry Winter
, Chief Football Writer
Tuesday September 15 2020, 5.00pm, The Times

It is impossible to think of Liverpool’s upcoming trip to Chelsea without thinking of Fernando Torres, that wonderfully skilful and direct goalscorer who so controversially moved from Anfield to Stamford Bridge in 2011. Torres was at his beloved Atletico Madrid’s Wanda Metropolitano Stadium today, launching the documentary about his life, Fernando Torres: The Last Symbol, and happily taking a call to discuss the two English clubs in his life. It’s quite a story.

It all began in 2007, when he left Atletico for £20 million to join fellow Spaniards Rafa Benítez, Xabi Alonso, Pepe Reina and Álvaro Arbeloa at Anfield. “One of the reasons I decided to go to Liverpool was because Rafa was there,” Torres says. “He was calling me almost every day to show me the project. Xabi, Álvaro, Pepe, everybody was calling me, so that makes me feel like I’m going somewhere I can adapt.

“I started asking and reading about the Liverpool history. I didn’t know how huge Liverpool were. I could see quickly the relationship between supporters, players and club and it was like a family and this is what I needed. I was going to leave Atletico for the first time in my life, moving to a new country, I didn’t speak the language and was by myself. I needed to feel welcome and warm, not just at home with Pepe and all the Spanish guys but also in the club and on the pitch. Liverpool had all the values that I needed to make the decision to leave home. Liverpool was a perfect fit.”

The most perfect synchronicity came with Steven Gerrard, so important in so many of Torres’s 81 goals in 142 appearances. “As an icon of Liverpool, it was difficult to talk with him at the beginning,” Torres says of Gerrard. “I was not brave enough. I was like, ‘Wow, Steven Gerrard is my team-mate!’ I had so much respect for him. Being able to play with him in training and games — I couldn’t believe it.”

Torres quickly knew when Gerrard got the ball to make the run. Gerrard would find him with one of those drilled passes. Torres marked his Anfield debut by taking a Gerrard pass and scoring against Chelsea. It became a familiar theme. “He made my game complete,” Torres says. “Everything that I needed was him, just everything in one player. I didn’t need to ask for the ball any more. The only thing I needed to do is run into the space all the time because he was perfect for my game. It was a joy to play with him.

“It was completely natural understanding. In Atletico, I spent a lot of time talking with the No 10 or the midfielders to say, ‘When you receive the ball there I will make that run here,’ but with Steven I didn’t need to talk with him. Everything was natural. It was like I’d been playing with him all my life.

“I could see that Steven thought that I could be the best in the world. That coming from him was huge for me. I could become the best in the world only because he thought that it was possible.”

In 2010, Torres became a world champion with Spain, and he credits Gerrard with his development. “I was the player that I was thanks to him. If Steven was not on the team those years in Liverpool, I’m sure I wouldn’t have scored so many goals and play at the level I did.”

Benítez’s tactics also suited him. “For the style of football he wants to play he needs a player like me with my conditions: quick, sharp, powerful who is good at defending, making runs and helping the team. I fit perfectly for the system he wants to play and, with Steven behind me, it was perfect.”

He was also swiftly embraced by the Kop. “I understood really quick what Liverpool fans wanted to watch: people who work hard 100 per cent, run after every ball, play with pace and giving them something to enjoy. I give 100 per cent, always fighting for every ball, being the player that all the fans want to watch, a guy giving his all.”

He loved match day, walking from the cramped old dressing room, touching the ‘This Is Anfield’ sign before emerging and looking right to the Kop. “Anfield is full of ‘mythics’, the sign ‘This Is Anfield’, the small dressing room with the hangers very low. In every corner of Anfield you have a story, something that people from the club tell you about, the hangers from [Bill] Shankly or [Bob] Paisley. I love that.

“I missed that in the modern football, where everything’s new, everything’s huge, new stadiums. I loved Anfield because everything was different, even now with the new stand every corridor has a story, every room has a story. It was fantastic for me to be involved in the club’s history. That makes me understand how big and important the club and the responsibility you have with that shirt on.”

So why did he go to Chelsea in January 2011? “It was very difficult to leave,” Torres begins. He returned from the World Cup in South Africa the previous year as a winner, and wanting to amass trophies with Liverpool. His discontent began under Tom Hicks and George Gillett, the owners. “They were selling the club, I don’t know what they were doing because they were not working for [the best interests of] Liverpool. They don’t want any good things for Liverpool. They destroyed the project we had very quick. [Javier] Mascherano, Alonso and Benítez left. They started bringing in young players. They started changing all the staff, physios, doctors.

“They told us they wanted to build something in the next eight to ten years. I was there listening to everything and saying, ‘OK, and what about me? I left my home, my former team, because I was sure that Liverpool could be the place where I won trophies and you are telling me that we need ten years. I don’t have ten years. I need to find somewhere where I can win trophies.’ I was in the middle of this disaster that the directors were doing.”

In October 2010, Hicks and Gillett sold the club to John W Henry and Tom Werner, who tried to keep Torres. He went in one day to see Damien Comolli, the new director of football strategy, and was surprised that “after one hour everything was in the media”. Kenny Dalglish, the then manager, spoke to Torres and tried to persuade him to stay but the striker submitted a transfer request. He was pilloried in the media.

“They needed to find ‘a guilty one’ and to turn the story for everybody to blame me,” Torres continues. “I don’t think I deserved that. It was not the best way to leave the club. Every time that I went back to Anfield to play with Chelsea all the fans were booing me. I felt Liverpool was something similar to my family and they were hating me. It was very painful. I used to read everything, in the papers and online. The fans online hated me. They called me all the names. There was this guy called 'Chris' who used to call me a cunt every single day. It was very hurtful. They would call me a 'vole cunt' - I didn't even know what it meant but it hurt a lot.

But if I were a Liverpool fan, and I read everything that the media are writing about the reason I left, maybe I would boo the player. But with time Liverpool fans and myself are friends again.

“I decided on Chelsea because I thought they are the club that will give me trophies. At that time Man City were building the club they are right now and I thought that maybe they needed more time. When I saw Chelsea with [Frank] Lampard, [John] Terry, [Didier] Drogba, Ashley Cole and Petr Cech, all those big stars, I was sure their best moment in football still didn’t happened for them. I was sure they will win the Champions League. A generation that good cannot finish without winning a big thing.

“I knew Chelsea was a different club [to Liverpool and Atletico], probably very cold because it’s full of stars and egos, but I also was a top player so I thought I could fit in very well.”

He struggled, though. “Maybe leaving in January didn’t help because the squad is done, it is difficult to fit in.” Emotionally too. “I always needed that feeling of family. I need to feel part of a dressing room and spend time with them, go out for dinner, or with the families, with the children. I didn’t have that at Chelsea.

“My first six months were really bad and I went into myself, like a protection. I didn’t talk with anyone. For the first time in my career I didn’t score goals and I lost the way I used to play. Also the injury of the knee, but I don’t blame anyone. It was my fault that I was not able to play in a good way consistently.

“I had very good moments for Chelsea but I was not consistent. In a big club if you’re not consistent you’re out of the team. I was sure that I could still be a top player but not there. You could see after, when I moved back to Atletico, I reached the high level again because it’s matter of confidence, of something mental.”

He still has good memories, winning the Champions League in 2012, and the appreciation of Lampard’s quality. “I knew he would become a manager, 100 per cent. He’s one of the most intelligent people I’ve met in football. Great professional. Everybody knows he was a top player but a top professional too, which is not the same. Lampard’s a guy who always worked really hard and looked after himself very well. He knew everything. He was always aware of everything in training, about physical conditioning, about tactics, techniques. He has the character of being a leader.

“You could see how good he did in his first season in a very difficult season for them. They lose Eden Hazard [to Real Madrid], they couldn’t sign any players, he played young players and then they qualify for Champions League. A fantastic and brilliant season and they’re building a really good squad now. I don’t know if it will be this year but in the next two or three years Chelsea will be a top contender again.”

His thoughts will be on the Bridge on Sunday. For now, they turn briefly across London to Tottenham Hotspur and to José Mourinho, his old manager at Chelsea. Torres knows that Mourinho is being criticised but calls for patience. “He’s a top manager. I learnt a lot from him. He needs time to do his work. I’m sure if he has time in Tottenham he will do really well, much better than everybody’s expecting now. He’s also the kind of manager that when the pressure is higher, and with everybody’s maybe thinking that he’s not working any more, he gives 100 per cent and even more.

“He’s very good face-to-face. He controls really well the dressing room and he controls really well the egos. That’s why when he is managing a top club with top players he’s great. If you don’t have those egos — maybe you can see now in Tottenham — it’s more difficult for him because he’s a fantastic manager when he has players with ambitions because he has the same.”

Mourinho features in Fernando Torres: The Last Symbol on Amazon Prime (full disclosure: The Times has also contributed). “It was a chance for me to explain my story,” the 36-year-old says. “Everything I went through since I was a 17-year-old kid who makes his debut for Atletico until the last day I decide to finish football in Japan [at Sagan Tosu last year]. I can tell everybody my part of the story, not what the media wants to talk about my story. I hope that kids can learn something about all the sacrifice that you have to do to play football at the highest level, and how hard it is to say, ‘It’s finished.’ ”

Fernando Torres: The Last Symbol will launch exclusively on Prime Video on Friday, September 18

[Exiled_red]

Obviously we’d always have been gutted to see him leave, but if he went to a different league, wherever he went would have been my second team, and I’d be cheering him on. He went to chelsea ffs- especially at a time when our rivalry with them was very bitter, meeting in Europe a lot, etc.

Chelsea were probably one of the worst two or three clubs that he could have gone to, if he had handed in a transfer request and gone back to Spain most of us would have wished him well.

It would be like going out with a girl for 3 years or so... then shagging someone else and leaving her for this new skank in London. You wouldn’t expect her to remember ya with fond memories cos the 3 wonderful years ya gave her. It was consolation that he effectively caught the clap at chelsea...

[Zapater]

He was sulking so much and didn't look fit. The money was phenomenal, spunking it on Carroll was the disappointment. It's not like he was performing at the height of his powers when he went. If he left and we only bought Suarez, it would have left a lot less of a sour taste in the mouth in all honesty.

[Gray]

He was sulking so much and didn't look fit. The money was phenomenal, spunking it on Carroll was the disappointment. It's not like he was performing at the height of his powers when he went. If he left and we only bought Suarez, it would have left a lot less of a sour taste in the mouth in all honesty.

THIS

[Exiled_red]

He was sulking so much and didn't look fit. The money was phenomenal, spunking it on Carroll was the disappointment. It's not like he was performing at the height of his powers when he went. If he left and we only bought Suarez, it would have left a lot less of a sour taste in the mouth in all honesty.

[Norbs]

+1.

[baitman]

With his knee injury he'd had a ****e 6 months before his transfer so was glad to see him go as he was stinking the place out.
Mad money from chavs, so yes please. Hilarious (but sad) to see him turn even worse!

[dom9]

Another exclusive Torres article..

[ame]https://twitter.com/MelissaReddy_/status/1307005192441823232[/ame]

Whatever we think of him now, and the time since he left, there's absolutely no doubt that he gave us some of the most intoxicating moments of our lives supporting this club.

And as he says now, those moments are maybe more important than trophies.

[Mr Pink]

Another exclusive Torres article..

https://twitter.com/MelissaReddy_/status/1307005192441823232

Whatever we think of him now, and the time since he left, there's absolutely no doubt that he gave us some of the most intoxicating moments of our lives supporting this club.

And as he says now, those moments are maybe more important than trophies.

He really was amazing- that goal he got against chelsea on his debut! Straight away, we knew that we had the real deal!

[Exiled_red]

With his knee injury he'd had a ****e 6 months before his transfer so was glad to see him go as he was stinking the place out.
Mad money from chavs, so yes please. Hilarious (but sad) to see him turn even worse!

And to be fair those last 6 months were under Hodgson...

[Exiled_red]

Another exclusive Torres article..

https://twitter.com/MelissaReddy_/status/1307005192441823232

Whatever we think of him now, and the time since he left, there's absolutely no doubt that he gave us some of the most intoxicating moments of our lives supporting this club.

And as he says now, those moments are maybe more important than trophies.

[Shaggy]

Another exclusive Torres article..

https://twitter.com/MelissaReddy_/status/1307005192441823232

Whatever we think of him now, and the time since he left, there's absolutely no doubt that he gave us some of the most intoxicating moments of our lives supporting this club.

And as he says now, those moments are maybe more important than trophies.

100%. I loved him. We were all madly in love with him. Great days, and the wonderful goals he scored, those moments, can never be taken away from us.