Well, he was the leader at Atletico, the star of the team, he was like Henry at Arsenal, his team mates receive the ball and straight away see if Torres was free.
Ok, I just meant that he is imo a good physical presence in the air.
I don't really agree, I think he is more suited to play against a defender like Bikey rather than someone like Navarro.
Thank you, good luck in the league, I like Liverpool and what they have stood for, I would definitely prefer you to win the league this season than Man Utd.
Yes, he was the star at At.Madrid. But no team was built around him. How many times people was asking for a midfield to send balls to him? What Cerezo brought? I tell you: Sosa, Richard Núñez, Jorge Larena, Nano, Musampa, Novo, Movilla and many others that I prefer not to remember. The players that was most likely to send him the balls was a little lazy bas**rd called Ibagaza.
Do you really think that this is building a team around a player of Torres quality? We are not talking about Ronaldinho, Deco, Messi, Xavi, Iniesta...
Yes, he is a good physical presence in the air (something unusual talking about a spanish striker who use to be small). But in england there are many defenders with a good physical presence in the aire.
Navarro is a better defender than Bikey. But there are fast defenders like Ferdinand too... a pacey defender is always a problem when you try to play for the deep balls from the midfield or you try to use your pace to overpass them. Torres scored... 8? goals against Barcelona and I think that Puyol is not a "stupid" defender that doesn¡t know how to defend. And after five seasons he didn't know how to stop Torres yet.
And I am talking about this because I'm at Atleti fan and know perfectly what has happened to my team the last two decades. And saying that the team was built around him is faaar from being real. He never had here a good team around him. (And for that reason, anything bar madrid...
)
However, I still think David Villa is a better striker, mainly due to the fact that he has more to his game, in terms of skill, ability to play with the team (including out wide) than Torres.
He has better things and worst ones. Villa isn't as good "main reference" on his own as Torres is. He hasn't that physical presence that Torres has and doesn't play on the defence shoulder as good as Torres does it. Is a player that use to need other player to his side to perform to his best. Most of his goals with the national team comes playing side to side with Torres. Torres is the other way, use to score more goals when he is playing on his own. Villa performs much better when other player is taking out the defenders over him because he is very good coming from the second line.
Moreover, one of the things that people always criticised more about Villa was how much he likes to have the ball for his own, so the ability to play with the team is a bit doubtful (despite I think is ok, but far from good or great). We are not talking about Rooney in that way.
Saying this, you use to loose some ability in some aspects of the game if you don't use them for a while. I am saying this because Torres played many times at Atlético widely (see any Barcelona match or World Cup) and he did many of his better matches playing widely. But he changed completely since he arrived to Liverpool. The first time I wrote in this forum I said that this was a good thing about Torres, even over him playing as the main reference on the defence shoulder... but Benitez wantes him for other things and you can't blamce him after last year.
