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 just joined the club's youth system. Chelsea have formalised his switch to Milan, who then confirmed that 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 after a soulless 6-0 defeat which 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 that Torres had departed but that he had stayed so long. He was still young but he had just completed his seventh season in the first team. He had scored 91 goals. He had also outgrown them. "I had to leave because I could see that my development was going in one direction and the club was going in another," he later admitted.
Some will conclude that 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 last three years. Torres became an idol of Anfield, scoring 54 goals in his first three league seasons, and 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 8, 6, and 1.
Longing to write
Atlético could not be happier, though. “The tweet we were longing to write. It’s official. Torres will wear the red and white shirt again. #TorresHasReturned”, ran the club’s twitter feed on Monday. Germán Burgos, Atlético’s assistant coach, had already announced a few days ago that it would be “wonderful” if they could bring him back. Now they have. When Torres was last at the club, Burgos was his team-mate. So, too, 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 Fernando Torres means to Atlético Madrid and their supporters. Torres played his first competitive game for Atlético in May 2001. In all probability he will now play his last competitive game for Atlético, too. He was seventeen then and he is 30 now, but here he will always be El Niño.
In 2000, Atlético were relegated for the first time in their history. 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 amidst 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 certainly wasn’t because of him, and when he departed it hurt but most understood. He was still one of them.
This decision has not been built solely on romance, which is not to say that there is no romance. But it does feel right, unlike other he made. 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 that suited him so well was dismantled. Rafa 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.
Still a story to tell
And so he went to Stamford Bridge, where he rarely seemed to fit. He has hinted that there may still be a story to tell. He also admitted, in a revealing and startlingly honest interview with Lu Martín in the Spanish newspaper
El País
in 2012, that his mindset momentarily changed; something had 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 necessarily be different for him. “We will get the best out of him,” Burgos says.
Simeone, who wanted to sign the striker in the summer, has watched, analysed, and stayed in touch with his former team-mate. He believes that Torres can add something to his side, that he has much to contribute still. He reckons that the right team, the right environment and the right style, could still suit him.
“Sometimes I thought: ‘I’ll run into space.’ And for 70 minutes I didn’t touch the ball,” Torres admitted of his first two years at Chelsea. “It was so different to what I was used to with Benítez that I was not comfortable and it showed.”
Benítez built a superb counter-attacking team round him at Liverpool, playing to his strengths, and the success was dazzling. Chelsea did not play that way but Atlético will be more likely to.
This is a different Torres, but they believe that he can still be useful. Atletico have evolved this season but that run into space, lost with the departure of Diego Costa, is a weapon that Simeone would like to recover and Torres is a player that Atlético have long wanted to recover too. From the very day he left. Guardian Service
