It’s difficult to exactly know who’s in the right and who’s in the wrong here, but it’s clear Fernando Torres thinks he was betrayed by Liverpool upon his £50m sale to Chelsea.
Our former striker, an enormous fan favourite between 2007 and 2011, left in January of that year to our Stamford Bridge rivals – much to the dismay of Liverpool supporters.
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It was a British record fee, and we’d just signed Luis Suarez, but at the time, the pain was enormous.
Torres has claimed in a new book by Simon Hughes called ‘Ring of Fire – Liverpool into the 21st Century and the players’ stories‘, that he had to force a move as FSG had stated their targets were long-term.
“Comolli told me that the new owners (FSG), they had an idea of how to spend their investment,” he began.
“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.
“It was presented as if I was a traitor. It was not like this in the discussion.
“Liverpool could not admit they were doing something wrong with the whole team. They had to find a guilty one.”
Liverpool fans unofficially forgave Torres for the switch to Chelsea in March 2015 during a charity game at Anfield, but these comments open old wounds.
If he’d have moved to Barcelona, say, like Luis Suarez did – we’d have understood – but having fought tooth and nail with Chelsea for years since we signed him – it was undeniably a kick in the teeth.
Since his departure, Liverpool have won a League Cup while he’s won the FA Cup, the Champions League and Europa League, while playing in another Champions League final with Atletico Madrid.
You could say that his justifies Torres’s decision to leave, but we still reckon if he could go back and do it differently – he probably would.