Torres (19 page)

10 March 2009

Do you remember
An American Werewolf in London
, a 1981 film directed by John Landis? The landlady of the Scottish pub warns Jack and David, two American lads on holiday, not to go wandering off into the mist, never to leave the road and, above all, to be extra-vigilant whenever there was a full moon. But the pair ignore that good advice and the werewolf makes its savage entrance.

It’s Tuesday evening at Liverpool and a full moon, bright, radiant, mysterious and threatening, looms over Anfield. But no one has warned the players of Real Madrid. No one has told them they will be meeting the werewolf dressed in red. No one has told them that Fernando Torres, together with Steven Gerrard, will be attacking them right from the first minute. They have not been vigilant. They are ripe for being taken apart without mercy. But before seeing how The Kid gets stuck into them, we take a step back … Twenty days before the first leg of the knockout tie with Real Madrid in the Champions 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 crisis of unprecedented dimensions. On 16 January, following three days of high-profile accusations, Real president Ramón Calderón was forced to resign because of what the press christened ‘Nanigate’ – allegations of vote-rigging during an official assembly the previous December to confirm the club’s 400-million Euro budget. Vicente Boluda, a 53-year-old shipowner and president of the third-biggest tugboat company in Europe, would take the helm until new elections in the spring of 2009.

In February, Madrid’s future was still uncertain but on the sporting front, things were improving. Since the Barça defeat, Juande Ramos had notched up nine consecutive victories and reduced the distance with Barcelona to seven points. The league title was once again up for grabs. Hope in the white half of Madrid was reborn. The opposite was the case in Liverpool, where, on 19 January, they lost the top spot in a 1-1 draw against city neighbours Everton, which the next day allowed Manchester United to stretch their lead at the top of the table. On 4 February at Goodison Park, against The Toffees, Liverpool said goodbye to the FA Cup after they were beaten 1-0 in the 118th minute, thanks to a goal from young substitute Dan Gosling. It was the Reds’ first defeat since 12 November 2008, when they fell to Tottenham in the Carling Cup. Furthermore, there was the unwelcome news of a 16th-minute injury to captain, Steven Gerrard, the team’s leading scorer with nine goals in 21 league games and the driving force in midfield. Replaced by Benayoun, he left the field with an injury later
diagnosed as a torn left hamstring. Benítez didn’t play him in the league game against Manchester City (1-1) and his presence at the Bernabéu was in doubt.

In short, the first leg of the tie arrived at the best possible moment for Real Madrid. It’s true that the team’s style of play had not won many plaudits. It had been criticised repeatedly for being safe, even boring, but results talked. The defensive shortcomings of the Schuster era had been replaced with order and precision. The midfield, with Gago and new acquisition ‘Lass’ Diara (from Premier League side Portsmouth), had recovered its solidity. Robben was intimidating – to such an extent that Torres observed: ‘He is a key player. If we give him space he could damage us because he can decide a match in an instant. We’ll take all the necessary steps to keep him under wraps and reduce his effectiveness.’ Higuaín had grown in stature and the front line had begun to function again – so much so that, in the last game before the Champions League tie, it had inflicted a six-goal defeat on an unfortunate Betis. Raúl, the captain, increased his club goal tally to 308, beating that of the legendary Don Alfredo Di Stefano. Those were some of the factors that augured well for Real Madrid in a competition on which they’d placed so much importance. Since the Portuguese, Carlos Queiroz (ex-assistant manager at Manchester United and then manager of the Portuguese national side), was manager in spring 2004, Real Madrid hadn’t got past the first knockout round of the competition and for a club that likes to define itself as the biggest in the world, not to triumph in Europe is a disaster. But as Juande explained: ‘In the Champions’ League we rely solely on ourselves, in La Liga we are reliant on others’ (implying that it was Barcelona who would have to make a stumble in order for them to be caught).

‘White pride’ and a good run of results emboldened interim president Vicente Boluda to declare: ‘Here (in Madrid) we will win 3-0 and over there we’ll score a load of goals.’ The colloquial verb he used at the end to indicate a ‘flow’ or ‘flood’ of goals (
‘
chorrear’ in Spanish) can have other, less refined, interpretations, which were understood by everyone in Spain and, of course, by the Spanish Army at Liverpool, where it provoked unfriendly reactions.

The last time Liverpool and Real had met was on 27 May 1981, in the European Cup final in Paris. It is strange that the two big powers in terms of European titles (Real has nine European Cups, two UEFA cups and one European Super Cup against Liverpool’s five European Cups, three UEFA cups and three European Super Cups) have not had more face-to-face encounters. At the Parc des Princes in Paris in 1981, it finished 1-0 to the Liverpool of Bob Paisley, in front of more than 48,000 spectators. Seven minutes from time, the left-footed left-back, Alan Kennedy, made the winning strike – a goal that ‘Barney Rubble’ (the nickname given to him by the Kop, after the character in the TV cartoon series,
The Flintstones
), remembers it like this: ‘There was a throw-in and the Madrid players thought that Ray (Kennedy) would give it to Sammy Lee or to Dalglish. I started a run from behind. No one was expecting me. I chested the ball down and slipped into the penalty area. García Cortés came for the challenge but failed to clear. He was afraid of giving away a penalty and so didn’t touch me and I ended up in front of Augustín. He thought I was going to pass and opened himself up a bit. Because of that I decided to shoot close to the left-hand post.’ A perfect angle and it brought them their third European Cup in five years.

Other times, other stories. That Liverpool side was made up of Clemence, Neal, Thompson, Hansen (Alan), Kennedy,
Lee, McDermott, Souness, Kennedy (Ray), Dalglish and Johnson. The one that comes out on to the pitch in Madrid at 8.45pm on 25 February 2009, lines up as Reina, Aberloa, Carragher, Skrtel, Fabio Aurelio, Mascherano, Xabi Alonso, Benayoun, Riera, Kuyt and Torres. Gerrard does not even make the warm-up, going straight to the bench. The Bernabéu is not the pressure cooker that their captain has asked for but there is a lot of noise from the crowd, with constant whistles for the Reds. The Real Madrid fans and the
Ultras Sur
(the most radical and extreme supporters) pick on Torres because of his Atlético past. They can’t bear the fact that the player, according to a list compiled for
The Times
just twelve days before the Bernabéu game, is now one of the 50 Greatest Liverpool players of all time. On the pitch, however, the players are wary of him. This is what Raúl says when asked about Torres’ goal drought in the Bernabéu:

‘Since Torres went to Liverpool he’s got rid of the pressure he had at Atlético and is displaying all his qualities as a footballer. He feels very supported and he does what he knows best, which is to upset his opponents with his power and his goal-scoring instincts. He is one of the most formidable strikers in the world.’

Torres responds to this flattery in the 20th minute, just when the Bernabéu crowd was shouting ‘
Arriba Madrid
’ in a bid to encourage their team not to be so timid and to go on the attack. Pepe Reina makes one of his trademark cannon-like clearances, Dirk Kuyt glances the ball further forward and El Niño runs onto it in typical style. Real’s defence, Cannavaro and Pepe, stay firm. Nevertheless, Fernando gets round the back of the Portuguese defender, ending up with just Iker Casillas to beat. He makes an angled shot but the keeper just gets a glove to it and deflects it. It was a good opportunity to break the jinx – and it proved to be the last. Torres had been playing with an injury since the
end of the first minute – as Rafa Bénitez would explain later – and is quite clearly limping in pain from his left ankle. He comes off just before the half-hour and sits down on the turf, while the club physios check him over. Benítez comes over to assess the situation. Several minutes go by and, after bandaging the ankle, he puts his boot back on and returns to the pitch. But by then he’s like a loose buoy floating between the white lines. He doesn’t move off the ball, he can’t run to receive the passes from the midfield. He stays there, hoping for the chance of a loose ball resulting from some kind of error. It’s obvious to everyone that he’s injured. And yet at the beginning of the second half, he comes back on. When questioned later, Benítez explains that the doctors had assured him ‘it’s not a serious injury and he could continue’. In addition, Torres himself wants to play and asks Benítez if he can carry on. But he can’t play properly and starts getting annoyed – so much so that, in the 55th minute, after an argument with Pepe, he is booked. Six minutes later, with his ankle swollen, he gives in. He raises his hands to salute the Liverpool fans up in the third tier, which provokes insults from the south corner. Choruses of ‘
Hijo de puta, hijo de puta!
’ (‘son of a whore!’), echo round the stadium until Torres disappears into the dugout.

He leaves the stadium 50 minutes later with a grim face and a brace round his ankle. The Liverpool striker, who should have been the key man of the match – the one who’d scored at Stamford Bridge and in the Emirates Stadium, who’d dominated Chelsea in the closing minutes – isn’t able to meet expectations. He’s not the Reds’ extra weapon. The kid from Fuenlabrada, who should have taken his revenge in the Bernabéu, is thwarted. But at least he returns to England with the first victory of his career against his eternal rivals – thanks to the diminutive Israeli, Heinze, who, in the 80th minute, pulls down Liverpool’s Kuyt and is
punished with a free-kick on the right. Fabio Aurelio takes responsibility, places the ball, surveys the options and puts in a dipping cross. Yossi Benayoun arrives from behind, completely unmarked, and with all the time in the world, leaps up to head the ball under the crossbar, leaving Casillas clutching thin air. The 6,000 travelling fans are delirious. The Bernabéu is struck dumb while the
Ultras Sur
end up, as usual, fighting amongst themselves.