Two in-form young Spaniards will be crucial in deciding which club goes into the semi-finals of the Champions League
Jonathan Northcroft
The drawback of his rise as a footballer is that Cesc Fabregas can no longer indulge in what was once a favourite activity: riding incognito on the London Underground. Fernando Torres flew in from Madrid to seal his £26.5m transfer to Liverpool on an £88 EasyJet flight. Torres was with his girlfriend Olalla, an economics graduate he met playing football on the beach when he was eight. Liverpool loves gossip – “rumour city”, Steven Gerrard calls it – though the local newspaper has featured Fernando and Olalla in its “Spotted” column only four times, three while eating pizza in Jamie Carragher’s sports bar.
Fabregas confesses to being an aficionado of the television programme Wags Boutique, but his own partner, Carla, has an even lower profile than Olalla. He and Torres are ordinary chicos with extraordinary gifts and would shrug modestly at the suggestion that they are the principal reasons their clubs are in the Champions League quarter-finals. On Tuesday, chest, bounce, volley, bom-bom-bom, Torres made scoring a great goal look easy as Liverpool found dumping Internazionale from Europe spookily straightforward. Six days earlier the San Siro was in Fabregas’s thrall, with Arsenal even more ominous in dispensing with AC Milan.
These Iberian princes have long followed one another. Torres, 24 on Thursday, was the Mozart of his age group in Spain just as Fabregas, 21 in May, was of his. Before he was 13, Torres had scored 64 times for Atletico Madrid’s youth teams and at 17 became the youngest player in the history of Atleti, gaining a nickname that endured, El Nino (The Kid). At 15, Fabregas was earning renown far beyond the borders of his native Catalonia and Arsenal, pinching gold from Barcelona, made him their youngest first-team footballer when 16. Torres was the leader of the Spain under-19 side that won a European title in 2002, and in 2003 Fabregas was the standout player of the world under-17 championships.
That both chose to build their careers in England, where a previous generation of foreign stars came to finish theirs, says everything about the Premier League’s current pre-eminence. Torres and Fabregas are not only symbols of their respective clubs, but of football’s new – club level – superpower. Spain used to enjoy the pick of the game’s best practitioners, before that it was Italy. Now these nations watch and applaud. The exploits in England of Fabregas and, even more so, Torres, feature extensively on Spanish television. The Italians laud Fabregas and Milan fans gave him a standing ovation at the San Siro. On Tuesday, Fiorentina players, in town to face Everton, sat in a Liverpool bar clapping Torres’s goal against Internazionale as it was shown on television.
Gazzetta dello Sport refers to “the phenomenon that is Fabregas”, while in the same newspaper, Gennaro Gattuso wondered whether Milan should break the bank to bid for Torres this summer. “He’s playing brilliantly,” said teammate Dirk Kuyt at the San Siro. “He’s unbelievably quick and is a killer in front of goal. There are not many players as good as him at the moment.”
Arsenal were spared a fully fit Torres when they visited Anfield in October. The striker had been suffering from a tight abductor muscle before the game and went off at half-time, so it was impossible to judge whether William Gallas and Kolo Toure could handle his blend of pace, touch and strength. Other forwards have these attributes but Torres’s way of dribbling straight for goal, deploying tight control to retain the ball at top speed, makes him unique. “He’s quick and powerful like Thierry Henry. People just bounce off him in training. He doesn’t act like a superstar and he closes down like Rushy [Ian Rush],” said Carragher. “He’s well worth the dough, isn’t he?”
Torres’s withdrawal at Anfield was a factor in Arsenal drawing 1-1, but more so was the irrepressibility of Fabregas.
Few sides work as hard as Rafael Benitez’s Liverpool at maintaining fixed shapes wherever the ball is on the pitch, with being in the correct defensive formation if possession is overturned a priority, but Arsenal’s baby maestro kept getting between their lines. The match-up between Fabregas and Javier Mascherano, a world-class operator hitting top form, will be compelling. Asked how teams should play against Arsenal, Fabio Capello cited Manchester United’s 4-0 FA Cup victory and commented: “United prevented Fabregas having any effect, a key factor in their dominance.”
Liverpool hanker after the kind of Premier League consistency achieved by Arsenal this season and the draw offers the perfect test of the theory that European games are completely different in timbre from domestic ones, and Benitez’s side are a different proposition. Liverpool’s success in two Champions League semi-finals against Chelsea suggests so. Chelsea went contrary to Premier League form when beating Arsenal in the 2004 quarter-finals, and in 1978-79 Liverpool won nine more league games than Nottingham Forest en route to the English title but lost to Brian Clough’s men in the European Cup. That there is a Premier League meeting between the first and second legs adds to the intrigue. Benitez has never even drawn against Arsenal away but won three of four league meetings at home and will be conscious that, in the two triumphs over Chelsea, a tipping factor was having the second leg at Anfield, just as in this tie.
“Nobody will want us, that’s for sure, because of our record,” said Carragher before the draw. “There’s a bit of mystique about us almost because people can’t work us out – they see us not doing so well in the league and yet doing so well in Europe. Chelsea always used to beat us in the league but somehow, in Europe, we always had the upper hand.”
Arsenal (and when do they not?) will see themselves as the goodies in the story, and for inspiration before the second leg will think of their miraculous day at Anfield 19 seasons ago when Michael Thomas won the league title for his club with the last kick of the campaign. When I interviewed Fabregas in November he had a visitor: Nick Hornby, who wanted to present him with a copy of Fever Pitch translated into Catalan. The book ends with a chapter on the Thomas game titled The Greatest Moment Ever. Fabregas seemed pleased, but a little nonplussed, by the gift – he had only just turned two when Thomas scored his famous goal. Torres was five.
Whoever emerges the winner in this head-to-head could prove pivotal in this year’s Champions League.
Jonathan Northcroft
The drawback of his rise as a footballer is that Cesc Fabregas can no longer indulge in what was once a favourite activity: riding incognito on the London Underground. Fernando Torres flew in from Madrid to seal his £26.5m transfer to Liverpool on an £88 EasyJet flight. Torres was with his girlfriend Olalla, an economics graduate he met playing football on the beach when he was eight. Liverpool loves gossip – “rumour city”, Steven Gerrard calls it – though the local newspaper has featured Fernando and Olalla in its “Spotted” column only four times, three while eating pizza in Jamie Carragher’s sports bar.
Fabregas confesses to being an aficionado of the television programme Wags Boutique, but his own partner, Carla, has an even lower profile than Olalla. He and Torres are ordinary chicos with extraordinary gifts and would shrug modestly at the suggestion that they are the principal reasons their clubs are in the Champions League quarter-finals. On Tuesday, chest, bounce, volley, bom-bom-bom, Torres made scoring a great goal look easy as Liverpool found dumping Internazionale from Europe spookily straightforward. Six days earlier the San Siro was in Fabregas’s thrall, with Arsenal even more ominous in dispensing with AC Milan.
These Iberian princes have long followed one another. Torres, 24 on Thursday, was the Mozart of his age group in Spain just as Fabregas, 21 in May, was of his. Before he was 13, Torres had scored 64 times for Atletico Madrid’s youth teams and at 17 became the youngest player in the history of Atleti, gaining a nickname that endured, El Nino (The Kid). At 15, Fabregas was earning renown far beyond the borders of his native Catalonia and Arsenal, pinching gold from Barcelona, made him their youngest first-team footballer when 16. Torres was the leader of the Spain under-19 side that won a European title in 2002, and in 2003 Fabregas was the standout player of the world under-17 championships.
That both chose to build their careers in England, where a previous generation of foreign stars came to finish theirs, says everything about the Premier League’s current pre-eminence. Torres and Fabregas are not only symbols of their respective clubs, but of football’s new – club level – superpower. Spain used to enjoy the pick of the game’s best practitioners, before that it was Italy. Now these nations watch and applaud. The exploits in England of Fabregas and, even more so, Torres, feature extensively on Spanish television. The Italians laud Fabregas and Milan fans gave him a standing ovation at the San Siro. On Tuesday, Fiorentina players, in town to face Everton, sat in a Liverpool bar clapping Torres’s goal against Internazionale as it was shown on television.
Gazzetta dello Sport refers to “the phenomenon that is Fabregas”, while in the same newspaper, Gennaro Gattuso wondered whether Milan should break the bank to bid for Torres this summer. “He’s playing brilliantly,” said teammate Dirk Kuyt at the San Siro. “He’s unbelievably quick and is a killer in front of goal. There are not many players as good as him at the moment.”
Arsenal were spared a fully fit Torres when they visited Anfield in October. The striker had been suffering from a tight abductor muscle before the game and went off at half-time, so it was impossible to judge whether William Gallas and Kolo Toure could handle his blend of pace, touch and strength. Other forwards have these attributes but Torres’s way of dribbling straight for goal, deploying tight control to retain the ball at top speed, makes him unique. “He’s quick and powerful like Thierry Henry. People just bounce off him in training. He doesn’t act like a superstar and he closes down like Rushy [Ian Rush],” said Carragher. “He’s well worth the dough, isn’t he?”
Torres’s withdrawal at Anfield was a factor in Arsenal drawing 1-1, but more so was the irrepressibility of Fabregas.
Few sides work as hard as Rafael Benitez’s Liverpool at maintaining fixed shapes wherever the ball is on the pitch, with being in the correct defensive formation if possession is overturned a priority, but Arsenal’s baby maestro kept getting between their lines. The match-up between Fabregas and Javier Mascherano, a world-class operator hitting top form, will be compelling. Asked how teams should play against Arsenal, Fabio Capello cited Manchester United’s 4-0 FA Cup victory and commented: “United prevented Fabregas having any effect, a key factor in their dominance.”
Liverpool hanker after the kind of Premier League consistency achieved by Arsenal this season and the draw offers the perfect test of the theory that European games are completely different in timbre from domestic ones, and Benitez’s side are a different proposition. Liverpool’s success in two Champions League semi-finals against Chelsea suggests so. Chelsea went contrary to Premier League form when beating Arsenal in the 2004 quarter-finals, and in 1978-79 Liverpool won nine more league games than Nottingham Forest en route to the English title but lost to Brian Clough’s men in the European Cup. That there is a Premier League meeting between the first and second legs adds to the intrigue. Benitez has never even drawn against Arsenal away but won three of four league meetings at home and will be conscious that, in the two triumphs over Chelsea, a tipping factor was having the second leg at Anfield, just as in this tie.
“Nobody will want us, that’s for sure, because of our record,” said Carragher before the draw. “There’s a bit of mystique about us almost because people can’t work us out – they see us not doing so well in the league and yet doing so well in Europe. Chelsea always used to beat us in the league but somehow, in Europe, we always had the upper hand.”
Arsenal (and when do they not?) will see themselves as the goodies in the story, and for inspiration before the second leg will think of their miraculous day at Anfield 19 seasons ago when Michael Thomas won the league title for his club with the last kick of the campaign. When I interviewed Fabregas in November he had a visitor: Nick Hornby, who wanted to present him with a copy of Fever Pitch translated into Catalan. The book ends with a chapter on the Thomas game titled The Greatest Moment Ever. Fabregas seemed pleased, but a little nonplussed, by the gift – he had only just turned two when Thomas scored his famous goal. Torres was five.
Whoever emerges the winner in this head-to-head could prove pivotal in this year’s Champions League.
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