FERNANDO TORRES has said he left Liverpool because he could not wait for success and has questioned how much progress the club has made since his departure.
In a new book – Ring of Fire: Liverpool FC Into the 21st Century – The Players’ Stories – Torres lifts the lid on his departure to Chelsea for £50m in January 2011.
The Spanish striker also claims he was portrayed as a “traitor” by the club during his acrimonious exit.
Liverpool
had just been taken over by Fenway Sports Group (then New England
Sports Ventures) when Torres held talks with director of football Damien
Comolli.
“Comolli
told me that the new owners [FSG), they had an idea of how to spend
their investment,” said Torres, now at Atletico Madrid.
“They wanted to bring in young players, to build something new. I was thinking to myself, ‘This takes time to work. It takes two, three, four, maybe even ten years.’ I didn’t have that time.
“I
was twenty-seven years old. I did not have time to wait. I wanted to
win. Here we are five years later and they are still trying to build –
around the same position in the league as when I left.”
n the book, Torres admits his unhappiness
but claims Liverpool started negotiations with Chelsea – only for him
to be depicted as the “guilty one.”
“It
was presented as if I was a traitor,” he says. “It was not like this in
the discussion(s). Liverpool could not admit they were doing something
wrong with the whole team. They had to find a guilty one.”
The book also contains interviews with Gerard Houllier, Jamie Carragher, Xabi Alonso, Didi Hamann and Phil Thompson.
