As Liverpool prepare to spend £27m on Fernando Torres they would do well to ensure his past is not forgotten. I don’t mean as a La Liga striker but as a child assassin and leader of a vicious under 11s Madrid gang called Las Tazas.
Torres became leader of this gang which operated from his barrio, La tortuga, in the centre of the Spanish capital. Entry to this gang was by family only and Torres had an older brother who had graduated some years previously after gaining a fearsome reputation for giving chinese burns.
An old friend of Torres’, Antonio Gafas, said:
We were totally wild. Like little monkeys but with sharper teeth and more fleas. People would pay us to stay away from them but most of all we performed hits on other gangs ensuring their growth was always stunted. Whenever a new leader came on, bang. We’d off him. They never learned. A new one would come, poff, he’s dead. And the deadliest of all us all was ‘Nando’ (his nickname at that time).
Torres was renowned for his lightning pace when chasing a rival and he took no prisoners. Gafas continues:
Once, during a summer, there was a boy in another gang who had disrespected Nando’s BMX bike and he had to pay the price. He was chased up and down Avenida de Cordoba before he was dragged down an alley. It was so quick. He simply ran at pace and karate kicked him in the head with a double barreled shotgun. There were brains and guts everywhere. Nando just laughed and said “Who’s up for a slush puppy, fellas?”
It couldn’t last though and soon he was arrested. Expected to face up to 30 days in a juvenile prison run by men possessed by the ghost of Franco himself he did a deal whereby he grassed up everyone involved in Madrid’s child gangs. He went supergrass and even their mothers found out. There was bedlam but since then the child assassin problem in Madrid has been minimal.
There are occasional outbursts when rival immigrant Irish and Peruvian gangs mix but in general it’s quiet. Gafas, however, offers Liverpool a stark warning:
At Atletico de Madrid everything was done to make Nando happy. They knew if they annoyed him his old personality could emerge at any time and nobody wanted to die with a slinky up their arse or a transformer in their brain. A training ground disagreement could mean death in seconds. This is a stark warning in case you’re wondering of a good way to introduce this paragraph.
It is a stark and crunchy warning, and already it’s whispered that Rafa Benitez’s beard has been grown simply to keep the new signing happy.
Liverpool might think they’re getting a goal machine but unbeknownst to most of them they’re getting a killing machine too.
But this one doesn’t have an off switch.
