Torres's loss of faith angers the faithful

SIDELINE CUT:What the Torres saga amounted to was the need for sports fans to believe that their heroes 'feel' for the club as much as they do, writes KEITH DUGGAN

OF ALL the reactions to the leaving of Liverpool by Fernando Torres, few could match Robbie Fowler’s for heart-on-sleeve loyalty.

The funny thing about Fowler is that even though his shining years coincided with Liverpool’s slow decline – their feathery fall from the “perch” on which Alex Ferguson fixed his gimlet stare when he first parked his boots on the gaffer’s desk at Old Trafford – he has somehow come to symbolise all of the values and triumphs that the Anfield club has prided itself on. Loyalty has been chief among those and that quality has, of course, been at the core of Torres’s controversial jump to London and the fabulous – and arguably immoral – financial transaction involved.

Fowler had the unique combination of qualities that made cult following by the Kop inevitable – Toxteth lad, short-arse, scamp, true goal poacher, businessman (“We All Live In A Robbie Fowler House” went the Yellow Submarine chant), social protester, joker and, of course, as infatuated with the club as the thousands who man the Spion Kop.

He is pushing 36 now and playing out the end of his career with the Perth Glory but the machinations at Liverpool were on his mind when he showed up at a Queensland radio station to participate in a fund raiser for flood victims. The promotion was called “The Shirts That Hurt”, the idea being that people would wear the shirt that made them least comfortable. Fowler appeared wearing a number nine Liverpool shirt back-to-front, with Torres’ name across his chest. “There is nothing wrong with the front of the shirt, it is the name on the back,” he said.

Fowler would have been one of the many shades that Torres would have been aware of during his three and a half years at Liverpool, with a silvering Ian Rush habitually seated in the stands as a reminder of the club’s more imperious days and a host of old boys with multiple league and European medals wandering around the press enclosure.

Whether Torres ever cared about the heritage and tradition at Liverpool is impossible to gauge. But at least he tried to.

The eleventh-hour pyrotechnics of his move to Chelsea was elevated into something of a royal abdication on the sports news channels; the photographs of the Spaniard exiting behind the smoked-glass windows of a car, the obvious relief that informed his opening remarks when he was unveiled as Chelsea’s latest prize horse all added up to a cold betrayal in the eyes of Liverpudlians.

And so they behaved like lovers spurned, with denunciations and burning his old shirts and binning Fernando quilts and mugs and tee-shirts and banners and all the paraphernalia. They quickly exorcised the city of Torres. But what was the Spaniard supposed to say or do as he sat in the new blue of Chelsea? Declare himself heartbroken that it hadn’t worked out at Liverpool? Point out that he had resisted overtures from Abramovich’s cheque book as far back as 2006 and that his decision to stay at Anfield was based on the guarantee that the club would invest in new players?

Point to his startling promise of his first two years – no player has ever clocked up 50 goals as quickly as Torres (although Fowler remains the player who reached 100 in fewer games than anyone else). Or talk about the personal misery of his World Cup experience in South Africa, where he cut a disconsolate figure on the periphery of a Spanish team going about winning its first World Cup?

If he felt his lack of sharpness was caused not only by his period sidelined through injury but through the frustration of playing with a club that seemed to be drifting from one tumultuous period to the next, then he was entitled to. The timing for Torres was unfortunate. Had Roy Hodgson still been in charge, then his decision to leave for a more promising club would have been regarded as inevitable and justified.

But the return of Kenny Dalglish has heightened sentiment and passion around Liverpool. The reaction to the second coming of King Kenny is proof once again of the unreasonable investment of faith that sports fans – tens of thousands of people – are willing to place in one human being. Dalglish cannot transform ordinary players into title challenging players. And yet some intangible change has already occurred.

It did not go unnoticed that for the brief few weeks when Torres played under Dalglish, he looked to have rediscovered his sense of purpose. And the team is grinding out wins; the club is slowly clawing its way back to more familiar heights in the league table. The signs were encouraging and that Torres chose to walk away now was quickly interpreted as an insult by everyone to whom Liverpool matters, from Fowler to the fans who will journey south to Stamford Bridge tomorrow with the express intent of barracking their former idol.

What the Torres saga amounted to was the need for sports fans to believe that their heroes “feel” for the club as much as they do.

There can be little question Torres tried to “get” what Liverpool was all about and that when he reviews his career, he may well fondly recall the atmosphere on Saturday afternoons – if not the conspicuous lack of success. Players come and go and only the gilded few like Torres have any substantial say in their destiny; that he opted to walk was crushing. That he rubbed salt in the wound by declaring it was his “destiny” to score tomorrow against his old club was a moment of foolishness that has landed on the Anfield infamy list.

It could well be that Torres will leave English football with a championship medal or two – but 10 points adrift of Manchester United, it is unlikely to be this season.

However, he could equally find his years at Stamford Bridge, a place prone to volatility caused by the rush to translate money into silverware, to be another frustrated period in his career. There are no guarantees but he was right in his assertion that he was, at least, moving to a club with ambition.

Liverpool, meantime, will continue to try to live with the billionaire club while retaining the belief in tradition and the melancholy sense that the best days are always either just behind them or are a few years down the road. Anyone who heard the riveting public interview that the Off the Ball boys conducted with Graeme Souness on Thursday night got an inkling of the way that Liverpool, for whatever reason, gets under the skin of football players who played there.

The Scotsman spoke about he club the way others speak about their faith. During the furore over Torres, a potentially more important decision about the club has been largely overlooked. Owner John Henry’s remarks suggesting that rather than abandon Anfield for a new stadium up the road, the club might redevelop the ground should help to preserve everything that Liverpool holds dear about itself. As the owner of the Boston Red Sox, Henry understands that Fenway Park – John Updike’s “lyric little bandbox”(and also archaic and manky and draughty) is what gives that sporting club its heritage. The same is true of Anfield.

The decision to build a new stadium at Stanley Park was informed by an anxiety to keep up with England’s other super clubs. The fashion for abandoning traditional grounds and rebuilding new stadiums is one teams may come to regret. Marvellous as the new Emirates stadium is, any Arsenal fan who has walked Holloway Road and been shown the block of flats where Highbury used to stand must find it strange. Maybe it is just nostalgia but when it comes to sport, there is something important – invaluable – about being able to go to a game in a ground that can boast decades and decades of remembered moments. So exit Torres and enter Suarez. The young Uruguayan best tread carefully. Fowler and the other young blades of yesteryear are watching.