Back in the day when Fernando Torres played for Liverpool FC, his main goal was to win all the trophies he could at club level. His main goal was to win the Champions League at any cost, but with the Reds that was going to be incredibly difficult back then. This is why he decided to move to another club that was competitive enough for his standards, he had no idea of what was cooking behind closed doors between the board of directors of both Chelsea and Liverpool. They were making a deal to buy his transfer without telling him anything, the recently arrived Fenway Sports Group wanted an escape goat to come out of the whole controversial transaction.
The then board of directors former by Italian Comolli, didn't give Torres the whole scope of the deal, he told the Liverpool Echo that: “Comolli told me that the new owners (FSG), they had an idea of how to spend their investment. They wanted to bring in young players, to build something new. I was thinking to myself, this takes time to work. It takes two, three, four, maybe even 10 years. I didn’t have that time. I was 27 years old. I did not have time to wait. I wanted to win. Here we are five years later and they are still trying to build – around the same position in the league as when I left.”
Torres will never forget that all the Liverpool fans still hate him for making that move, but it wasn't his fault: “It was presented as if I was a traitor. It was not like this in the discussion(s). Liverpool could not admit they were doing something wrong with the whole team. They had to find a guilty one.”
Photo credit: Atletico Madrid