The wife takes only a fleeting interest in football. Enough, though, to know her stereotypes. She was on her way out last night as I settled down in front of the telly for the Champions League. Chelsea were warming up. A blond Spaniard appeared on the screen.
“Fernando Torres,” she said, accurately. “So he’s still rubbish, is he?” She didn’t say rubbish — she used an earthier, faecal word, very familiar to football connoisseurs but unsuitable for a family newspaper.
I thought about it. “No, not exactly rubbish,” I replied. “He’s scoring again, you know. But in general, he seems to have settled into this place where he’s permanently on the brink of not actually being rubbish any more at all, but is, all the same, still quite far from being amazing; far enough away from rubbish definitely not to be rubbish but not far enough away for it to be certain that he’ll ever get back to his best.”
Halfway through that sentence I heard the front door slam. The house was suddenly quiet.
Well, Torres certainly wasn’t rubbish last night. In fact, he was rather slick, even as Chelsea gave an impressive Nordsjaelland side one of the most tentative 4-0 drubbings you’re every likely to see.
Playing in front of an attacking threesome of Victor Moses, Oscar and Juan Mata, Torres was stealthily effective. He ran intelligently, held the ball up nicely and seemed well attuned to the runs of his team-mates.
For Chelsea’s first goal he showed surprising upper-body strength to bundle Enoch Adu (legally) off the ball, turn and lay a pass off to Frank Lampard, who then played Mata in to score. Eleven minutes later he was unfortunate to be stranded offside as the ball pinballed into his path, ripe for the futile wallop into the back of the net which he duly gave it.
Although for most of the second half Chelsea toiled, Torres didn’t panic, flap or simply disappear — as he often used to last season, when the unsettling late-period brilliance of Didier Drogba loomed over him from the bench. He persevered. It was promising.
Torres was helped last night by a flirtatious attacking tactic Nordsjaelland favour of building play rather too languidly from their own penalty area. Still, it was the Spaniard’s own dogged running that helped force opposing defenders into giving the ball away.
His nicest touch of the night, to my mind, was his super-short pass into Oscar’s path for the midfielder to burst through and set up Ramires for Chelsea’s fourth goal. It demonstrated everything that had been subtle and effective about Torres’s game all night: strength and vision with his back to goal. Still, though. Something was missing.
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After the match had finished, the wife returned from her evening out. “Ask me what happened in the football,” I said. “What happened in the football,” she asked.
“Chelsea won, 4-0,” I said. “Ask me if Torres scored.”
She cocked her head to one side. “Did Torres score?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “but...”
Before I could explain any further, she was already walking up the stairs to bed.
