Peter Byrne/PA Archive/Press Association Images
Swapping clubs is always going to be a big life decision for a player, but moving between such fierce rivals as Liverpool and Chelsea means accepting a quite unique and often unpleasant type of pressure. As described in the previous entry, Liverpool fans were less than impressed when their hero made the move down South to London. Had Torres being paying attention to his former club’s recent history, he might have seen this coming. Fans infamously made death threats against Steven Gerrard’s family in 2004 when the Liverpool captain was on the verge of a move to Jose Mourinho’s title-winning Chelsea side, leading to the player pulling out due to fear for the safety of his nearest and dearest. The reaction to Torres leaving might not have been quite so hateful, but the fans certainly did not hold back in making public demonstrations of their anger.
Just as Sol Campbell discovered when moving from Tottenham to Arsenal, fans reserve a unique place in hell for players who move between rivals. Torres had been a hero at both his previous clubs, Atletico and Liverpool, so the scorn was not something he would have been used to. While many Chelsea fans were delighted to have captured Liverpool’s prize asset, seeing it as confirmation of their club’s superiority after years of jibes based on Liverpool’s comparatively more trophy-rich history, others were suspect of the player for having shown such disloyalty and were concerned whether the move was motivated by the right reasons.
There was certainly a sense that not only did he have to survive the anger of the Liverpool fans he left behind, but also had to convince a contingent of the Chelsea crowd of his good intentions as well.
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