Liverpool FC Forum

[Scottbot]

From the Daily Mail today:

'I really feel at home here,' he said. 'From my first day as a Liverpool player, right up to today, I have always felt that Anfield is my home. I feel like I am from Liverpool.

'I would like to be part of Liverpool's history one day by winning trophies. I have plenty of years here, I'm sure of that, and I hope the trophies will come soon.
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'The fans have seen some of the best players in the world playing for Liverpool, and now they sing my name.

'For me, it is amazing to score at Anfield and amazing to score in front of the Kop. When I hear people sing my name, it is the best feeling I can have on the pitch.

Walk on: Torres says he's proud to be a 'Scouser'

'But I have only been here two years, and I have not won any trophies yet. I have only scored some goals, but I hope, in a few years, I can write another book, explaining about the trophies I have won as a Liverpool player.
'The people here are very different from in Madrid. Over there, people don't have much respect for players, but, here, even Evertonians talk to me in a really good way. When I was at Atletico, the Real Madrid fans didn't like me, but Everton fans are really friendly with me. I must say, I was surprised by that.

'This is my home, and it helps that I have learned the language. Have I picked up any Scouse? Deffo! I am picking up words all the time, because there are a lot of Scousers at the club.

'It was difficult to begin with, but I can more or less understand them now. If my daughter grows up speaking English and Scouse, I will be proud.'

[stmichael]

What a read

DEFFO 

Fernando Torres: exclusive interview with Liverpool and Spain's 'El Nino'

Spanish striker Fernando Torres talks about life at Liverpool and in the Premier League, and how he had managed to avoid the limelight despite his football superstar status.

By Jim White
Published: 1:11PM GMT 23 Nov 2009



Firm favourite: Fernando Torres has already written himself into Liverpool lore with his goalscoring exploits

The middle of October, and it is a tricky period for Liverpool Football Club. For the first time in more than 20 years they have lost four consecutive games. Worse, their next game is against the league champions, their much-loathed North West rivals Manchester United. It is no wonder, when it comes, that the match is a testy, bruising encounter, the tension thickening the air inside Liverpool’s Anfield stadium. So aggressively do both sides chase each other down, none of the players appears to have any room in which to manoeuvre; the moment they gain possession an opponent snaps in at their shins.

But then, after 65 minutes of battling stalemate, something extraordinary happens. Fernando Torres, Liverpool’s Spanish centre forward, who has been absent through the previous calamitous run of defeats with a persistent groin injury, lurks on the halfway line between two United defenders, watching the ball intently, rocking on his toes, waiting for his moment. It comes as his team breaks out of defence.


Sport on television With the opposing defenders momentarily distracted following the path of the ball, he makes a sudden sprint sideways, creating himself a yard or two of space. His colleague Yossi Benayoun sees him go and slips an inviting pass into his path. Torres takes off in pursuit of the ball, United’s Rio Ferdinand a couple of inches behind him, trying to claw him back, laying an arm across his chest in an attempt to throw him off balance. But Torres is undaunted: brushing off Ferdinand, the world’s most expensive defender, as if he were an irritating fly, he bears down on the United goal.

When he is 10 yards from it, with a swoosh of his right boot, he smacks a shot so powerfully past Edwin van der Sar that the United goalkeeper barely has time to raise a hand before the ball thrashes into the back of the net.

The whole incident lasts less than three seconds. But it changes everything. The home supporters, who had been nervy, many of them convinced over the previous week that their club was in terminal decline, explode in relief. As Torres runs to the stands in celebration, the front of his red shirt clasped in his teeth, the better to demonstrate his fealty to the badge on his chest, there might well have been complaints about the noise as far away as Wigan.

Then, after a moment or two, the crowd gathers its feelings into one collective articulation. From somewhere in the heart of the Kop a chant begins, sung to the tune of The Animals Went in Two by Two: 'We bought the lad from sunny Spain. He gets the ball and scores again Fernando Torres, Liverpool’s number nine.’ And it doesn’t stop for 10 minutes.

This is what Torres, who is regarded by many as the best striker in the world, does: he scores goals that mean something. With a hammer-blow shot, he restores belief, puts a stuttering enterprise back on track, reinvigorates the cause. In 66 appearances for Liverpool he has, at the time of writing, done it 47 times. And how his worshippers love him for it. Such is the power of his play, and such is his ability to make telling contributions, that Torres, a man whose fitness over the coming weeks is to become inextricably linked with his club’s fortunes, has legitimate claim to be the most influential footballer in the country.

Certainly there is no one to touch him in hard commercial figures: more Liverpool tops with Torres 9 on the back are currently being sold than any other replica football shirt. There are not many football-mad boys in the country, it seems, who do not dream of one day growing up to be Fernando Torres.

A couple of weeks before the game, Torres, 25, is participating in a photo shoot for his sponsor, Nike. He is wearing one of the company’s new AW77 sweatshirts and has the hood pulled up, covering his shock of blond hair. He stares at the camera, a concentrated, contemplative look on his face, as if he has retreated into his own personal space to prepare for challenges ahead.

It is an intensity exacerbated by the huge black eye he sports, a trophy gained in a recent match when he headed the back of an opponent’s head instead of the ball (defenders in England, he says, appear to have much harder skulls than their Spanish counterparts).

Yet there is something oddly contradictory about his stare. Shiner notwithstanding, this is not some old bruiser daring the lens to match his gaze. The player who strides across a football pitch with a rippling muscularity is no shaven-headed meat-head but rather he has the fresh-faced, freckled complexion of a Californian surfer boy. And when the camera stops clicking and he introduces himself, his smile is so disconcertingly wide and youthful, he really does look as if he is staring at you from the pages of an American high school yearbook. No wonder in Spain the man who scored the goal that won his nation the Euro 2008 trophy is known as el Niño: the Kid.

"When I was a boy, I was really thin, small, long-haired," he says. "I always looked young. People thought, he can’t play football. I used that to my advantage. In the first season when I arrived here [in England], it is true that maybe 80 per cent of the players in the Premier League didn’t know me, so I could use the way I look. It was easier for me because they didn’t know what I can do. They think maybe they can bully me."

They were soon disabused. On a football field, Torres is no shrinking violet. At 6ft 1in, he terrifies opponents with his speed and physicality. The Liverpool fans soon spotted he was a lot more than he seemed. Within days of his arrival the Torres song was echoing around Anfield’s Kop, the stand that had once rung to the praise of Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish and Robbie Fowler.

"It is incredible," he says of the chant. "I can understand why the fans would sing [his colleague] Stevie Gerrard’s name, because he is from here. But now a player comes from another country and gets this? It’s amazing to get this. Each player has one place in the world where he is happy and as a result he plays well. My place is Anfield. Every game I can play there I feel good."

Torres’s journey to Merseyside is one he never expected to make. "As a kid I never once dreamt of playing for Liverpool," he says. "I always live in the present. I never dream about what might happen. Why? It might not."

Torres grew up in Fuenlabrada, a working-class suburb of Madrid. An early footballing memory is of being pressed into service to help his elder brother practise his goalkeeping.

"He is eight years older than me so I couldn’t say no. At first it was difficult for me," Torres says, pausing a moment with a dry comic timing. "But I can beat him now."

Playing with bigger children on the indoor courts of Fuenlabrada, Torres soon honed the physical side of his game. He found that he liked fighting his way through rival defences – it played to a competitive instinct so intense, he says, that he avoids doing anything at which he cannot display mastery. "Tennis, golf… why play if you cannot win? And I am useless at them, so I don’t play."

His mastery of football was never in doubt, and at the age of 11 he was signed up for the youth team at Atlético Madrid, the club his family supported. By the time he was 17, he was playing for the first team.

Atlético is a club that has long suffered in the shadow of its illustrious city rival, Real, and the presence of a world-class player in their midst was regarded by supporters as a sign of unusual providence. As he became Spain’s leading striker, they took Torres to their hearts, and when it became clear six years later that he was heading to Liverpool, there was close to revolution in the home stadium.

"It was difficult to see the people trying to stop the transfer, but last year when Liverpool played Atlético both sets of supporters joined in singing my name, so I think now the fans of Atlético understand my decision. It was really difficult. But after seven seasons there I never played in Europe [in the Champions League, the world’s most prestigious club competition]. I knew I needed to find a solution. I would love to have been like Stevie, he was in the academy at Liverpool, he was a supporter of Liverpool and he won trophies with Liverpool. That wasn’t going to happen for me at Atlético, so I needed to move. It was difficult, but I think I made the right decision."

Liverpool paid £23 million for his services, a fee which, when you consider that Joleon Lescott and Dimitar Berbatov have changed hands for far more, represents the bargain of the footballing century. Torres came to Liverpool, he says, because of the Spanish connection: the manager, Rafa Benitez, another Madrileño, spoke persuasively to him in his mother tongue. (Nine other squad players and six members of the backroom staff also spoke Spanish as a first language.) Which was just as well, as Torres didn’t speak any English at all.

"Not a word," he says. "The first month, that was really difficult. When Jamie [Carragher, Liverpool’s vice captain, and another home-grown talisman] spoke to me I didn’t realise he was speaking English. Even now, when two Scouse people are talking between themselves it is difficult to follow. I know some Liverpool words, but this is not the right place to say them. People say to me sometimes, “You have a Scouse accent”, but when I go to a different place it may be strange for them, so I try to speak proper English. But I have a few words. “Deffo”, I like that."

His English is rapidly improving. And his sharp eyes suggest he misses nothing. "My mother says to me, 'I see you in press conference yesterday speaking English, and you are very good.' That’s because she doesn’t speak English. I remember before I came to England watching Rafa Nadal or Fernando Alonso and thinking they were brilliant, but that was because I understand nothing. Now I can tell they speak like me: not very good."

Despite the advances in his English – encouraged by the fact that Benitez insists that it should be the lingua franca of the Anfield dressing-room – he still finds occasional cause to retreat into Spanish.

"Sometimes I speak it as a code,’ he says. 'If me and Albert [Riera, his team and international colleague] want to discuss a move on the pitch, we will speak in Spanish so the opposition fullback doesn’t understand us. It works for us because so far we have not come across an English fullback who speaks Spanish."

Beyond the language, there are some things he misses about his homeland: the ham for one thing, which he has flown in from Madrid. But he says his wife – his childhood sweetheart, Olalla Dominguez, whom he has dated since they met when they were both 15 – has settled easily.

Despite becoming a mother in July when she gave birth to their daughter, Nora, she is continuing to study for a degree in social education at Uned, the Spanish equivalent of the Open University. What he most likes about England is the sense of anonymity. It may sound surprising, knowing the enormous affection in which he is held in his adopted home, but Torres says he finds it much easier to avoid attention away from the pitch than he did in Madrid. Back home, he says, the intensity of scrutiny grows greater by the day as next year’s World Cup approaches. Spain are the favourites to win.

"If I can touch the cup it will be the best moment for a footballer. After that you cannot do anything better," he says.

"But there is high expectation for us, and that is not always the best for you, that pressure. I think you have one chance in your life to win the World Cup and maybe this is our chance. We have good players, playing well together, who have been together for three, four years. If we miss this chance, this may be it. The pressure is very big."

In Liverpool, he believes, there is far less critical analysis, the press is more forgiving, the supporters less intrusive. "Scouse people are very respectful," he says. "If they see me walking my dogs in the park, they say, 'A’right Nando, lad.' And that is all. I like that."

He likes it because the evidence would suggest he is not someone who courts publicity. For instance, when he and Olalla married last summer, they did so in a ceremony in a town hall in a Madrid suburb to which only two guests were invited. And neither of them was a photographer from Hello! magazine. Many footballers would regard that as a seriously wasted earning opportunity.

"I try to keep my private life apart," he says. "I try to live as normal a life as possible, because I am normal. I was born in a working-class place in Spain, my father worked every day of his life and I don’t like to be a big-head, or go to parties or events, or be seen about. I don’t like people talking about me. I prefer no one talks about me. I prefer to be at home playing PlayStation and being calm."

This is the extraordinary thing about Torres: he masks his genius beneath a carapace of total ordinariness. There is nothing exceptional about him off the pitch, he insists. For him, life is about football, family and an occasional five-hour session of Fifa 2010. But then a cynic might suggest that maybe he has no pressing financial need to put himself in the public gaze or to engage with the myriad commercial endorsements of the modern game, given that when he signed for Liverpool he was the highest-paid player in the country, pocketing a cheery £5m a year. So what does a young man spend all that money on?

"I don’t like people when they are famous or rich changing their lifestyle, so I try to be the same person as I always was," he says.

"I don’t like to buy flash cars or flash clothes. For me, the best thing is to keep with the people you knew back when you were not famous. You meet so many people who try to get you to go to parties, or to photograph you in flash places, to distract you from your goals."

When he leaves, after assiduously shaking hands with everyone from make-up lady to camera assistant, he heads off back home in an Audi 4x4, a car that, for the most coveted man in the most well-rewarded football league in the world, really does count as not very flash at all.

And yet, in another contradiction at the heart of Torres, for a man who says he does not like to be the centre of attention, he appears to enjoy posing for the pictures, naturally knowing how to hold a camera’s gaze.

"It is OK," he says of his role as a model. "But it is not my job. And I don’t do anything that stops me from my job: being a footballer. It’s not so hard for me now because I can control almost everything. I have experience and I know which is the route to follow. But when I was 17 and first in the [Atlético] team, then there was a different way."

What was that?

"Of people who want to know you, be your friend, take you to places that maybe it is best you don’t go. And if you follow that path maybe your career is over before you started. So I am really happy that I didn’t do that, but I could keep my friends and the important people around me. And now I’m 25 and playing for the best team in the world."

He makes it sound as if he has been fully absorbed into the Liverpool way. "Yes, when I go back to Spain I look the wrong way in traffic. I had a problem with a taxi in Madrid because I looked right not left, and I nearly got hit. And I start driving on the left instead of on the right."

Does this suggest he is here to stay? "Who knows," he smiles. "But for the next four years, yeah. Deffo."

what a wool 

nah in all seriousness the guy is a legend

[Scottbot]

Why Fernando Torres is right to want his kids to grow up as Scousers, by Derek McGovern

By Derek McGovern in Mirror Football Blog


Fernando-Torres-Steven-Gerrard-Liverpool-cropped

it was a surprise to learn that Fernando Torres wants his children to grow up and be Scousers.

Many would say it's impossible to do both.

The thing about Liverpudlians, as Torres has no doubt found, is that to a man they have a childlike sense of fun.

I'm not talking about the famous Scouse wit - like money, some Scousers have it; most don't.

I'm talking about the ability to find enjoyment where none should exist, like a funeral, an industrial strike, or an Everton match.

In London, those who have any dosh left after paying the mortgage rush home at 11pm because they have to work the next morning. In Liverpool they stay out until the wee small hours because they have to work the next morning.

I told a Cockney mate that I was writing a piece about why it's great to be a Scouser and asked if he had any advice.

"Lie," he said.

That's the thing about non-Scousers. They really haven't a clue what a joy Liverpool is to live in.

They rely on Merseyside stereotypes, perhaps because Merseysiders have nicked most of their stereos.

They shudder when they see our boarded-up shops - but rather those than boarded-up minds.

They shake their heads when they read of Croxteth gang crime, ignoring the inconvenient truth that Liverpool is the safest of all English cities for everyone bar Sun readers.

My missus is a Cockney who would never dream of leaving Liverpool now, even if I untied her. Thousands of the students who spend three years here on half a lager choose to stay on and have their homes here, their homes repossessed here, and ultimately their homes burgled here.

They put up with the bad eggs of the city - as bad as any eggs you'll find - because the good eggs, the vast majority, are the warmest, most generous of all.

That's exactly what Torres has discovered in less than two years on Merseyside. He has opened his heart to Liverpool and in return Liverpool has opened its heart to him. It helps of course that he scores bundles yet doesn't nick our orange girls off us, but we'd love him anyway.

And as for his daughter speaking Liverpudlian - a hybrid of Spanish and Scouse would sound most appealing, unless of course it was called Spouse.

[Benny The Noon]

Fernando Torres is nearing full fitness, confirms Rafael Benítez

• Striker could be fit to face Blackburn this weekend
• 'The feedback was very positive,' says manager


The Liverpool manager Rafael Benítez has confirmed that his striker Fernando Torres is close to recovery from the injury that has kept him out of the squad since the beginning of November.

Torres was injured while on international duty for Spain and has not been able to play since Liverpool's Champions League match against Lyon. However, Benítez believes he could be fit to face Blackburn this weekend.

"The feedback we had about Torres yesterday was very positive and he was feeling good," he said. "We will see how he is in the next training sessions, but it seems as though things are going well."

Asked whether the Spain international could face Rovers, Benítez added: "It depends on how he feels during the week. He has to keep training with the fitness coach, but if he is feeling better maybe he can be involved in normal training sessions and afterwards we can decide."

Benítez expects to have something close to a full squad of players to choose from for the encounter with Sam Allardyce's side as the summer signing Alberto Aquilani is finally available for selection, while Steven Gerrard is nearing full match fitness.

"We have two or three players with knocks, but hopefully they are small things," said Benítez. "It is always very positive [to have a fully fit squad], but there is a big difference in players being available and being ready.

"When they are coming back from injuries you have to be careful, but at least we will have options we didn't have before."

[andy_g]

And as for his daughter speaking Liverpudlian - a hybrid of Spanish and Scouse would sound most appealing, unless of course it was called Spouse.

my girlfriend speaks a hybrid of spanish and scouse, and so does my little boy - and they both sound great. he's got longish blonde hair and a fierce shot on him too... she's got long brown hair and is cr'ap at football.

the problem is he's more into sporting gijon than liverpool but i'm working hard on his education.

[Waldo]

Fernando Torres is nearing full fitness, confirms Rafael Benítez

• Striker could be fit to face Blackburn this weekend
• 'The feedback was very positive,' says manager


The Liverpool manager Rafael Benítez has confirmed that his striker Fernando Torres is close to recovery from the injury that has kept him out of the squad since the beginning of November.

Torres was injured while on international duty for Spain and has not been able to play since Liverpool's Champions League match against Lyon. However, Benítez believes he could be fit to face Blackburn this weekend.

"The feedback we had about Torres yesterday was very positive and he was feeling good," he said. "We will see how he is in the next training sessions, but it seems as though things are going well."

Asked whether the Spain international could face Rovers, Benítez added: "It depends on how he feels during the week. He has to keep training with the fitness coach, but if he is feeling better maybe he can be involved in normal training sessions and afterwards we can decide."

Benítez expects to have something close to a full squad of players to choose from for the encounter with Sam Allardyce's side as the summer signing Alberto Aquilani is finally available for selection, while Steven Gerrard is nearing full match fitness.

"We have two or three players with knocks, but hopefully they are small things," said Benítez. "It is always very positive [to have a fully fit squad], but there is a big difference in players being available and being ready.

"When they are coming back from injuries you have to be careful, but at least we will have options we didn't have before."

Be great to have Fernando back this weekend.

[metalhead]

I know its old, i feel like this everytime Torres gets injured  

[Yossi_Benaloon]

Liverpool desperately need him back firing on all cylinders to get some goals as we are struggling. At least one fan here seems to remain convinced he will top the Premier League scoring charts this season. I agree he still can if he avoids much more time on the sidelines.

[shawnk]

No matter how good he is, he needs someone to feed him(or Gerrard) good balls. Not long balls as I dont see he's the Heskey/Crouch kind of striker that can win air balls (maybe the second ball), if you look closely he lost it most of the time.

Currently, it's going to be difficult as we are defending with 8 players most of the time or in our own half and we have no creativity in bringing the ball forward. Although, we did well with it by having 3 clean sheets but lets not forget we are talking about Liverpool FC here. I'm afraid we may not have Torres soon if we are not involved in major competition like CL or at a position of winning the EPL. Lets not forget why he left A.Madrid at the first place.

[Dundalk]

The honour for the best strike rate since the Premier League was created in 1992-93 goes to Fernando Torres.

His 48 goals in 67 appearances gives him a strike rate of a goal for every 1.4 games played.

Torres is followed by Thierry Henry on 1.46, Ruud van Nistelrooy on 1.58 and Alan Shearer on 1.7

[Richj]

The honour for the best strike rate since the Premier League was created in 1992-93 goes to Fernando Torres.

His 48 goals in 67 appearances gives him a strike rate of a goal for every 1.4 games played.

Torres is followed by Thierry Henry on 1.46, Ruud van Nistelrooy on 1.58 and Alan Shearer on 1.7

Class!

[SupitsJonF]

Too bad he can still get moved from that list .  Henry and RVN are done, and left a pretty damn good rate.  We'll have to keep good form for Torres to retire with that.

[Owzat]

Makes his 100th appearance last night and noone has commented in this thread, the last entry near a week ago. 61 goals in 100 apps for Liverpool, compared to Drogba's 43 in jos first 100 apps for Chelsea. While many will cite his absence as reasons we lose, he has played in plenty of defeats.

Torres' Hundred

Apps : 100
Mins : 7665
Goals : 61
Mins/Goal : 126
Mins/App : 77

Home : P52 W33 D13 L6. Goals 40 (0.769 goals/app, 103 mins/goal)
Away : P48 W26 D12 L10. Goals 21 (0.438 goals/app, 169 mins/goal)

He makes slightly more minutes per appearance home than away (79 v 74) But despite his phenomenal goalscoring we still lost 16% with him playing, only slightly better than Rafa's overall record of losing around 21%. Despite popular myth about our injuries, Torres has played in SEVEN of our 10 defeats this season, racking up not 20 or 30 mins here and there, but 540 mins with just two goals. 540 mins is 77 mins per app, same as his 100 game average. He missed the beachball defeat, the loss at home to Lyon and would probably not have played in the Carling Cup loss away to Arsenal.

Ironically he missed five games in a row, his longest absence this season and since missing December last season (seven games), and we went unbeaten (P5 W2 D3 L0), he returned and we lost two in a row and only just won the most recent. Funny how people cite injuries when we're in bad form, but he missed seven in a row this time last season and it never got a mention. Perhaps that's because we were top, had won four of those seven games and were into the "round of 16" in the Champions League. Torres also missed six in a row in October/November last season, we lost our first game of the season but won three of the six and were top, so funnily enough that wasn't an issue - although some do cite it as why we didn't win the league.

So this season's five in a row is only the third most games Torres has missed in a row for Liverpool, but because we're having a bad season it is all down to injuries like his. Back to a positive note, keep it up Nando. Maybe he can hit inspired form and save our season.

To quote a bit of ABBA - SOS (Save Our Season) Fernando, The Winner Takes It All

[shawnk]

Again, nice post Owzat and appreciate the facts and stats. 

[maypaxvobiscum]

he never fails. one of the best foreign imports ever to grace England up there along the likes of Zola, Cantona and Schmeichal (sp).