Home   >   Opinion   >   Chelsea to blame for the Torres odyssey

Chelsea to blame for the Torres odyssey

By on December 27, 2014

Fernando Torres will finally be moving on from Chelsea this January, making his loan move to AC Milan permanent. Just a few years after Chelsea forked out £51.5 million for Torres, the Spaniard will be leaving for nothing, and in his entire time at Chelsea only scored twenty goals, in one-hundred-and-twenty appearances. His infamous move has clearly ended on a sour note, and the euphoria that surrounded his signing is equalled by the relief of his departure – Torres will soon be off Chelsea’s hands. How much you can actually blame Torres, is debatable. That one barn door miss against Manchester United in 2012/2013, now that was on him, but the majority of his failings can clear be pinned on injuries, and many of them at that. If anybody should be of blame, it should be Chelsea.

Think back to July 2010 – the stage is the World Cup final and the set is Soccer City, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Torres comes on as a substitute, halfway through extra-time with the score still level. By all means, he in part did his job, as Andres Iniesta bagged the winner for Spain while Torres was on, though Torres had no direct involvement in the goal. However, as Spain were hanging onto their lead in the final few moments of extra-time stoppage time and Spain hacked the ball up the pitch (words you hardly ever hear), Torres pulled up as he ran onto it, felt his groin go, and had to be stretchered off. This should have been a big red flag for Chelsea, who would sign Torres later in the summer – though Torres had struggled to be fit for the tournament, those were due to different injuries. At the age of twenty-seven, Torres should have been nearing his physical peak, yet found himself pulling up with injuries after just over a quarter of an hour on the pitch.

As it turned out, that injury only took three weeks of rehabilitation, and did not prevent Torres from starting the season with his new club. However, before you give the go ahead for spending a Premier League transfer record fee on a player, it would do well to look at their medical history least a year or two back. That World Cup, in fact, Torres had struggled to be fit for after undergoing two knee operations throughout the 2009/2010 season for a knee cartilage problem, and that was the least of it. His recent medical history included an abdominal strain which kept him sidelined for two months in late 2009, and recurring hamstring injuries. On three separate occasions he tweaked his hammys in less then four months.

It is easy to say Torres’ medical history was, to say the least, checkered. He had done his hamstring multiple times, knees, and groin twice in the span of just three years. For a player who relied so heavily on his speed, any slight muscle injury should have set warning sings off immediately, much less a barrage of injuries. Torres then became bulkier, underlying the very thing that made him so lethal to protect that very same aspect of his game. And it is not like he was a world beater in the times between injuries. He won the World Cup, but had to mostly ride off his teammates success; at the 2010 World Cup, Torres failed to score or assist one goal despite featuring in every one of Spain’s matches in South Africa.

During his final three full seasons with Liverpool he had only averaged about a goal per two full matches played, far less than in his first scintillating debut season with twenty-four goals in just thirty-three league appearances. That was back before the injuries hit, and in fact the former-Atletico Madrid player had only suffered one knock in his six years in Madrid. Then, Torres was on fire. His winning goal in the 2008 European Championships final in Spain’s 1-0 win against Germany was a terrific example of his acceleration – managing to surpass Philipp Lahm in just ten yards with a full length handicap to poke home a finish. It was this acceleration, combined with those afterburners that put him a class above the rest. When that was taken away, he had to adapt to a larger, bulkier figure, which must have gone against all the training it took to get him to that point, his big move. He hasn’t been able to adapt.

Now, Torres very may well never be able to do so. He has reached and passed the time for change, nearing his thirty-first birthday, and has to be forced to preserve his talent rather than enhance it at Milan. In ten Serie A appearances so far this season, that hasn’t exactly gone well with just one goal and no assist coming from Torres’ feet. But it isn’t Milan taking a leap of faith – they must know what limits Torres has, and at least got him for free. Chelsea, however, were making a risky buy for any price back in 2010, much less £51.5m. Torres might be able to blame his downfall to Liverpool’s medical staff, who apparently mis-handled his situation, but Chelsea can only blame themselves for their outlandish spending.

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.