He (Torres) no longer shows the appetite that marked him out as exceptional, writes Ken Early.
“It’s still a contact sport. As long as I’ve been playing there’s been contact. And tackling should be allowed. It’s an art of the game. You don’t mean to tell me that any crowd in the Premier League doesn’t enjoy one of their players winning the ball with a hard but fair challenge? You know, we aren’t going to let people come to Molineux and play fancy football. We have to stop them doing it.”
That was the Wolves captain Karl Henry, speaking a couple of weeks ago after Match of the Day had shown a compilation of his challenges on Joey Barton during Wolves’ draw with Newcastle. Poor Henry was indignant at being singled out. In his view the repeated smashing of Barton was hard but fair. He had the character references to prove it: “Alan Smith was saying, “Great stuff,” when I went in to tackle Barton. He’d smash into one of our players and I’d say the same.” Smith has been sent off seven times in the Premier League.
Ludicrous McCarthy
On Saturday, hard but fair Henry slid through Bobby Zamora and broke his right ankle. Zamora might play again in February. “I would never go out to hurt anyone” protested Henry, who was annoyed that some of the Fulham players dared to criticise him for a challenge that put their main goalscorer out for several months. “It was disappointing some of them were having a go at me,” he moaned.
Wolves went on to amass six bookings and a sending-off. Their manager Mick McCarthy slipped effortlessly into the role of victim. It was plain that the bad guys in all this were the anti-Wolves forces in the media. “It has been overly publicised that Karl is a nasty player and that is not the case at all… TV drew attention and you guys write about it. It is media-led.”
McCarthy’s complaint was ludicrous in light of the spontaneous crowd reaction to what had happened out on the pitch. Fulham supporters had condemned Wolves’ attitude by singing “Disgrace to the Premier League.” The chant was new and it could be a sign that despite what Karl Henry and Alan Smith think, not everyone enjoys the kind of reckless play that inevitably results in good players being kicked out of the game for months at a time.
Fancy footballers
Yet even if the Fulham song hints that the macho ethos of English football might be changing, the ability to be kicked repeatedly in the back and carry on as though nothing has happened remains indispensable. Fernando Torres once seemed to get this. During his first season in England, Torres won as much praise for his ability to take the knocks and keep coming back as for the 33 goals he scored. On Sunday against Birmingham he looked more like his weakling predecessor Fernando Morientes.
Defenders know that when an aerial ball comes towards Torres they can hit him hard and the referee will usually overlook it. What has become apparent in recent times is that this strategy, diligently applied, can effectively snuff him out of a game. He no longer shows the appetite that marked him out as exceptional.
The hard men will keep kicking, and Torres might hang around or he might not.
There are several schools of thought on why Torres has faded. Roy Hodgson insists he is simply short of full physical fitness after recovering from multiple injuries. Some supporters fear he is disillusioned by the knowledge that the club is going nowhere. Maybe he’s just tired of getting kicked in the back. “I just can’t imagine what state I’ll be in within five or six years if I continue to play here,” he said in April, “it could easily give me problems when I stop playing.”
The one thing Torres must not do is complain about being targeted by defenders. In English football only the hard men are allowed to feel sorry for themselves. Like the unfairly put-upon Henry, or the perennial martyr McCarthy, or the tragic Ryan Shawcross, who, soon after smashing Aaron Ramsey’s tibia and fibula with a rash challenge at the Britannia Stadium, told reporters “It’s been a really tough few days”. Shawcross complained last week that “Arsene Wenger must have something against me.” (What might that be?)
Think back to the shock on the face of Cesc Fabregas as he took in the horror of Ramsey’s splintered leg. Might that memory have fed into his desire to leave Arsenal for Barcelona during the summer? Most pundits reckoned Shawcross had done nothing wrong. What are the chances of Lionel Messi ever wanting to risk his bones in a league like that?
The hard men will keep kicking, and Torres might hang around or he might not. If he does go home, those charged with selling the Premier League around the world better hope Karl Henry is right that people prefer hard but fair challenges to fancy football. All the fancy footballers will be in Spain.
Ken Early is chief football correspondent for Newstalk 106-108FM. He will write a regular column for JOE.ie throughout the Premier League season.
