Tony Barrett - Times Online Liverpool’s failure to match the ambitions of the Spain forward have led to the player’s disenchantment with life at Anfield “I identify with the values that define the club; hard work, struggle, humility, sacrifice, effort, tenacity, commitment, togetherness, unity, faith, the permanent desire to improve, to overcome all obstacles.” Fernando Torres: El Niño: My Story Somewhere along the way Fernando Torres stopped identifying with Liverpool. Their values were no longer his values, their paths, which had been intertwined, diverged and the loyalty that once meant he refused even to “think about playing for another English team” has given way to a desperation to join Chelsea. The blame game that inevitably accompanies the most acrimonious of separations is under way. In direct contrast to his image, Torres is being characterised as an opportunistic, shallow individual of questionable morals whose greatest skill apart from a profound ability to score goals is a propensity to market himself as someone who supporters can believe in. But past experience tells us that history is merely repeating itself where the 26-year-old is concerned and that his greatest “crime” involves harbouring an ambition that he feels Liverpool, like Atlético Madrid before them, are unable to satisfy. That is what Margarita Garay and Jorge Lera, his representatives from the Bahía Internacional agency, and Torres told Damien Comolli and Kenny Dalglish, Liverpool’s director of football strategy and caretaker manager respectively, during talks at Melwood, the club’s training ground, yesterday. The message was almost identical to the one they had delivered to Atlético officials 3½ years earlier — that their client’s hunger for success was not being sated and it was in the best interests of everyone for him to move on. The parallels between the pull factors that attracted Torres to Anfield in the summer of 2007 are uncannily similar to the push factors that are now driving him into the arms of Chelsea. “This was one of the reasons why I wanted to depart Atlético, getting the chance to play in the Champions League was key to me leaving Madrid,” Torres would later admit. When Torres joined Liverpool they had just contested their second Champions League final in three years, now they are facing up to a second consecutive season as outsiders looking in on Europe’s most glamorous cup competition and he can take no more. The process of disengagement did not begin this week, however. It did not even begin this month. Torres’s disillusionment with Liverpool’s decline dates back more than a year. On a flight to the city’s John Lennon airport from Paris last February he discussed the problems plaguing Liverpool under the regime of Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr with a journalist friend. “We cannot compete if they stay but they are not the only problem,” he said, his disquiet with a club who were in danger of losing their way altogether painfully palpable. As the months passed and Liverpool’s decline was only accelerated during the ill-fated reign of Roy Hodgson, so Torres retreated into his shell on and off the pitch. The slumped shoulders and look of indifference that came to characterise him on a match day were equally evident when off duty. The man who previously had the world at his feet was now carrying the weight of it on his shoulders. He remained a popular, if diffident, figure in the dressing room but the distance between he and his team-mates was becoming increasingly apparent. When a team bonding evening was held at a Japanese restaurant in Liverpool city centre, Torres was the only player who did not attend. He also failed to turn up at the players’ Christmas night out, although that event did come shortly after he had become a father for the second time. The Spaniard once admitted that “fame means you end up retreating into ever smaller places with your closest friends, loyal people you can trust”. It was not the unwanted trappings of celebrity that drove him to solitude, though, it was simply a symptom of his disengagement from Liverpool. Chelsea were as aware as anyone of his disenchantment with life at Anfield. Indeed, their first unofficial “approach” actually pre-dated it with John Terry, their captain, making it clear to Torres that he should join him at Stamford Bridge when the pair bumped into one another at the Fifa World Player of the Year awards gala held at the Zurich Opera House in January last year. At the time, the bashful Torres just shrugged his shoulders and walked away, but the next time Chelsea came calling he was all ears. That came last summer when Chelsea used the channels available to them to make Bahía aware of their interest in Torres. The problem was that although Roman Abramovich coveted the forward and wanted to make him his latest trophy signing, Chelsea’s valuation fell well short of Liverpool’s and their interest was destined to come to nothing. Torres’s agents may have felt that the £50 million tag that had been placed on the head of their most lucrative client was excessive but on their own official website they listed him as being worth £44 million. Chelsea, basking in the glow of their league and cup Double, wanted Torres but they did not desperately need him at that stage and the failure of their interest to harden meant he had no alternative but to give Liverpool another season. There was one other factor behind his willingness to recommit to such an extent that on August 3 last year he told Liverpool’s website that his “loyalty to the club is the same as the day I signed”, a visit by emissaries of Kenny Huang to Madrid that led him to believe that the good times he craved were just around the corner. The representatives of the Chinese businessman, who launched an unsuccessful bid to buy Liverpool last summer, informed Torres’s camp that once their prospective purchase was complete the club would be able to compete for the best players in the world. Their promise to provide a quick fix came to nothing, however, and another seed of Torres’s progressive disillusionment had been sewn. But it is Liverpool’s failure to show any sign of a return to the standards that first attracted him to the club that has been the most crucial element behind his disenchantment. After leaving his beloved Atlético he admitted that he could not afford to give his best years to “a transitional period” and with Liverpool’s rebuilding process only able to begin now after the departures of Hicks and Gillett he once again feels that his exit is the only solution.
