Carragher Recalls Help Given to Fernando Torres upon Liverpool Arrival
Jamie Carragher has recalled the incident that led to striker Fernando Torres finding his feet at Liverpool.
The Spaniard completed a £ 20 million move from Atletico Madrid back in 2007. It was a big investment on the part of Liverpool and it was only player who did not seem to have the entire confidence of other clubs like Manchester United, who were looking at him back then. Torres went on to become one of the best players in the Liverpool history, although he earned the fury of the fans after securing a £ 50 million move to rivals Chelsea in 2011.
Carragher, though, says that Torres was not at his best in the first week at the club. He has even gone as far as saying that the Spaniard struggled a lot, but those struggles were largely as a result of not settling in properly. Carragher said that he tried to make Torres more comfortable with his new surroundings by putting on a Torres jersey on his own son’s, who was four years old at the time, back. Carragher says that the performances from the Spaniard even in training showed a dramatic improvement from then on. Torres went on to score 33 goals in his debut season for Liverpool.
“I tried to help people, especially early on when they’d just signed.The example is [Fernando] Torres. At first I thought, ‘God, I’m not getting much out this one’. He didn’t say a word to anyone and was struggling in training for the first week. So I bought my son a kit with Torres’s name on the back. I brought James into Melwood to try make Torres feel a bit better. James was only four-years-old and didn’t have a clue,” said the former Liverpool defender, who is currently seeing Torres play for his boyhood club Atletico Madrid once again.