FERNANDO TORRES first set foot in the Vicente Calderon as a nine-year-old.
Alongside his family, he visited Atletico Madrid’s trophy room, and began a lifelong love affair with his home-town club.
Torres has grown up loving football, but it was his grandfather Eulalio who nurtured his adoration for Atletico, never tiring of telling him just what it meant to be a part of the club. With that kind of influence, it was hard to imagine Torres ending up anywhere but Atletico, and he signed for them in 1995.
After signing his first professional contract in 1999, injury held Torres back before finally making his senior Atletico debut in May 2001 at 17.
A decade after that first visit to the Calderon, the young Torres had finally made it onto the pitch.
But this was a very different Atletico Madrid to the one Eulalio had grown up with. Relegated to the Segunda Division for the first time since the 1930s in 2000, Atletico were at their lowest ever ebb. Torres would go on to score his first senior goal the following week, the winner at Albacete.
But it would be a bittersweet occasion, as it wasn’t enough to see Atletico promoted, as goal average denied them. The following season though, Torres scored six goals as Atletico won the Segunda Division and returned to the top flight, where he finally began to establish himself as an Atletico Madrid hero.
If there is anything that devoted Torres to his fans more than his goals, it was his attitude.
In his own words, he recognised that it was not long ago that he himself had been just a fan, hanging around outside the training ground trying to get autographs from his idols. It was no real surprise then that he was made captain of the club aged just 19.
His first senior call up to the Spain squad came in 2003, and Torres ended the 2003-04 season with 19 goals. But after the highs, it was to be a disappointing season, first as Atletico failed to qualify for the UEFA Cup after losing to Villarreal in the Intertoto Cup Final, then for Spain as they crashed out of Euro 2004 at the group stage.
He suffered further heartbreak for Spain at the 2006 World Cup, when despite scoring three goals in the group stage, Spain were eliminated by France in the second round.
But the time finally came for Torres to leave his boyhood club. Atletico once again missed out on Europe, and when Liverpool came calling, all accepted it was the right move for him. It is a symbol of just how adored Torres was by Atletico that after deciding to leave for Anfield, he called a press conference to simply thank the club and the fans and to wish them goodbye.
The Atletico fans did not begrudge him his move, and accepted that their hero was finally going to a club whose stature matched his talents and could fulfil his ambitions the way Atletico never could.
The move rejuvenated Torres as he fulfilled one ambition and became the hero of a nation, as he scored the winning goal in the final of Euro 2008 against Germany, to deliver Spain’s first international trophy at senior level since 1964.
Today’s game is all about Torres.
Injury robbed him of the two meetings between Liverpool and Atletico in last season’s Champions League, both games finishing 1-1. While it is not the return to the Calderon he dreamed of, it will at least be a chance for him to be reunited with the club and the fans that are in his blood
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-fc/liverpool-fc-news/2009/08/08/liverpool-fc-s-fernando-torres-looking-forward-to-atletico-madrid-reunion-100252-24345889/2/
