Fernando Torres: “We have to take advantage of the spaces that Barcelona leaves us”

Fernando Torres commented that he’s not even thinking about doing Real Madrid a favour by beating Barcelona in this Sunday’s match against the Catalan squad. ”We have to think about ourselves. The players and fans have to think more about our own team. Lately we’ve been thinking more about others and that’s a problem”, stated the captain.

The Atletico de Madrid striker doesn’t believe that the Catalan team is in a crisis after the most recent results and pointed out that ”the great teams always get back up. Maybe they’re a bit affected mentally, since they’re advantage over Real Madrid has diminished, but they only need one victory to revive themselves. I saw the match they played against Betis and they had lots of chances. If we take advantage of them being a bit down spirit-wise, we have a good chance of winning. We can’t let them play the way they want to”.

Fernando Torres maintained that the Barcelona players won’t be affected by the pressure and added that ”They’re used to playing with pressure, although what is true is that when things don’t go the way that a team is used to, they can go into a bit of a funk. We have to take the game to them and play the way we want, since that way we’ll have more options of winning. We can’t leave them spaces, as that would be lethal”.

With respect to the goal-scoring skill he’s displayed in the past against the Catalonian side, ‘El Niño’ said that ”you score more goals against some teams than others, but there’s no specific reason. What we want is to win, and I don’t care who scores the goals. For example, in the first-round match the goal was put in by Kun”.

When it came time to talk about which team is the favourite to win the League title, Torres pointed out that ”it’s very even. I’ve seen Barca as being better than the rest. The problem is that they have a complicated schedule, as they have to come to Vicente Calderón and they have a hard time here. Three points against you and the ‘goal-average’ factor are a lot to overcome. I don’t care who wins and I prefer to think about my team. We are healthily envious, especially of Sevilla, as they should be a mirror for teams like us that want to continue growing. Perhaps they’re the squad that deserves it the most, as they’ve come from below”.

Regarding the keys to defeat Frank Rijkaard’s team, the Atletico de Madrid forward thinks that ”we’ve been beating them for two years. They’re an opponent that has the ball a lot and it’s difficult to take it away from them. We have to take advantage of the spaces that Barcelona leaves us to counter-attack. In the last match against Getafe, you could see that we can do lots of damage if we have spaces”.

“Looking at our schedule and our opponents, I think that if we can beat Barcelona, we’ll have much of our ground covered. But in the world of football, you can’t be assured of anything. If we get 6 of the 12 points left at play, we could earn a spot in the UEFA Cup”, assured the captain.

The striker doesn’t think that Barcelona finds themselves in a crisis and explained that ”they’re a great team and young. You can’t talk about the end of an era because their players are young and have plenty of football ahead of them. When they regain their confidence they’ll become a great team again. I’m not inside to be able to know what’s going on, but they can fix it. I haven’t seen any team play at the level that Barcelona did last year”.

The Atleti attacker assessed earning a UEFA Cup spot as positive and stated that ”this team isn’t at the level of the top tour classified in the standings. We have to make it to UEFA and next year try and catch the teams at the head of the competition. These teams have been playing together for a long time and you can tell. We have a short bench and we’ve been affected by the injuries to Miguel, Maxi, Petrov and Valera. Maybe if we hadn’t had those injuries we’d be fighting with those teams until the final week. Because of our roster, we can’t aspire to compete with Real Madrid or Barcelona right now, but surely we’ll be able to next year. We have to have a more extensive roster, as for some matches we’ve only had 11 players from the first team and the rest from the reserves”.

Fernando Torres also was asked about the future of Mexican coach Javier Aguirre and gave his opinion that ”earning a UEFA spot would be a turning point for people to begin to trust the coach and the roster. I hope that we earn a European spot and, starting with that, can build the foundation for next season”.

To finish, he was asked about his physical state and his injured ankle. ”The doctors told me that I’ll have some slight problems from here until the end of the season. I’m feeling better and we’ve been pretty careful during the week”, said Torres, who added that ”all of us players like playing in these matches. We depend on ourselves and we want to ensure ourselves of a spot in the UEFA Cup as soon as possible. We don’t need our manager to motivate us, since given the magnitude of our opponent the players know what they have to do”.

J. Díez Largacha
PHOTOS: Ángel Gutiérrez