WHY TORRES COULD BE BEST RED EVER

[Cunny]

apologies if already posted, good read though

 

http://www.liverpoolfc.tv/news/drilldown/N...080401-1005.htm

Daily Mirror columnist Brian Reade assesses the remarkable impact made by Liverpool's new number nine and reveals why he can already be talked about in the same breath as King Kenny.

 

Before last month's Reading game I bumped into a mate whose Anfield memories go back to afternoons when Jimmy Melia's ample backside stretched the red stripe on his white shorts to the width of a girder.

 

He needed to get something off his chest about Fernando Torres. Although the mere mention of the Spaniard's name made the Fiftysomething's eyes blaze like a child on Christmas morning, he was clearly troubled.

 

And so he launched into a long confessional in which he unburdened his guilty feelings. He spoke of being visited in the middle of the night with the sacrilegious thought that it was no longer Kenny Dalglish or Kevin Keegan who were the best players he'd seen in red, but this kid who'd barely been around for five minutes.

 

I gave him ten Hail Marys and told him to revisit the Anfield scriptures. But one crucifixion of Everton later, I'm beginning to buy into his blasphemy.

 

The superstar has yet to draw breath who could prove in a season that his contribution to the Liverpool cause exceeds Dalglish's. But if Fernanado Torres sees out his six-year contract in the same manner he has seen out his first six months, there is a good chance he will win a place in our collective heart as Liverpool's finest.

 

And resistance from even the most ardent Dalglishophile will be futile because the cold eye of history will be the judge. Put simply, if Torres develops the way his talent and character suggest he will, and if Liverpool improve with him the way they surely must, he will be named World Player of the Year before 2013.

 

Michael Owen is the only Red to be named European Player of the Year while still at Anfield, with Kevin Keegan and Kenny Dalglish earning runners-up spots and Steven Gerrard making off with a bronze. There have been others such as Roger Hunt, Graeme Souness Ian Rush and Alan Hansen who could lay claim to a place in the best world side of their day. But ask a fan of any age from Buenos Aries to the Bosphorous to name a Liverpool player who at some point was the best on earth and they would be stumped.

 

Ask them after the 2010 World Cup, when the then 26-year-old Torres will hopefully still be the Liverpool Number 9, and they may have a name for you.

 

Due to Cristiano Ronaldo's stunning form, Torres' achievements in his debut season have been criminally overlooked. Compare his 21 League goals (with six games left) against four of the most successful foreign attackers to have moved to the Premiership.

 

In Ronaldo's first season at United he scored four League goals. The following season it was five. Didier Drogba's first two League totals at Chelsea were 10 and 12. Denis Bergkamp hit 11 in his first season for Arsenal and 12 in his second. And the great Thierry Henry managed 17 and 17, more than a few of which were penalties. All of those players except Bergkamp were arguably playing in better teams than Torres currently is. As were Keegan (whose first season haul at Anfield was nine), Dalglish (20) and Ian Rush (17).

 

But the statistics don't tell half the story about this phenomenal young player, who possesses every single quality a striker needs: Pace, power, control, movement, guile, coolness, maturity, timing, heading ability, two quick feet, bottle, technique (insert your own attribute of choice.)

 

When he signed for Liverpool a Spanish media pundit said: "The wonderful thing about Fernando is you never see him score the same goal twice." I still haven't. Neither have I seen him score a scruffy one. Even the ones described as gifts (against Derby and Middlesbrough at Anfield) were mainly due to the mental pressure he puts defences under. The same reason Milan's Marco Materazzi was sent off which massively swung the last round of the Champions League in Liverpool's favour.

 

Sitting in a Milan bar after Torres had claimed revenge for Shankly 43 years on, someone asked what his best goal so far had been, and all six of us gave a different answer. Mine was his Ricky Villa slalom in Marseille but virtually every one of his 28 goals this season have been worthy of a frame.

 

Indeed the one we'd just witnessed in the San Siro summed up his towering talent. Fabio Aurelio played in a lovely cross, but it was Torres's ability to bring it under control so quickly, to turn his tight-marking defender so easily, then place it with such power and precision in the corner of the net in one of the great stadiums of world football, which exemplified his class.

 

A sign of any sportsman's true greatness is to make what he is doing look like it is happening in slow-motion. That was how his goal against Everton on Sunday looked from my view-point on the Kop. When he picked up that loose ball in a packed box time stood still. All the other bodies seemed frozen to the spot, incapable of doing anything to stop the back of the net rustling.

 

Yet there is more to his game than scoring. Ask Steven Gerrard why he's blossoming in that second striker role and he'll tell you that the intelligence of Torres' runs and the panic it causes among defenders creates the space for him to exploit.

 

Ask him why he had a frustrating game for England against France in that same position and he'll hopefully tell you that Wayne Rooney isn't a shadow of the player Torres is when it comes to leading the line. And if Stevie won't Fabio Capello will.

 

The most remarkable thing about this young Spaniard is that he has something of every great Liverpool striker I've had the pleasure to have seen: St John's tenacity, Hunt's accuracy, Keegan's engine, Toshack's heading, Dalglish's perception, Rush's movement, Aldridge's opportunism, Fowler's repertoire, Owen's pace. It's all there. And in his first season as a marked man in a foreign land playing in the most physically demanding league in the world, he's proved it.

 

Torres has yet to show himself superior to King Kenny but he has a real chance of becoming the first Liverpool player to be judged by experts as the best in the world, a feat which would mark him down as the greatest Red of all-time. And you'll have had the honour to have witnessed his every glorious shimmy.

 

So go on. Bounce.

 

Brian Reade is a Daily Mirror columnist whose book about his life as a Liverpool fan - 43 Years With The Same Bird - is published in July.

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