Fernando Torres commented in the Press Room his impressions facing the match against Barcelona next Sunday at Vicente Calderón. The '9' demonstrated to have very clear his priorities: “We have to think on us. The players and fans have to think more on Atletico of Madrid. Lately people think more in other things, and that is a problem."

The forward of Atletico of Madrid denied that the team from Barcelona goes through a crisis after the last results and pointed out that "the big teams always rise. Maybe they could be mentally soft because they have diminished their advantage with Real Madrid or Seville, but they only need a victory to resucitate. I watched the match that they played against Betis and they had many chances. If we take advantage of the weakness of spirit that they can have, we have many options of victory. We shouldn’t let them make their game."

"When one goes wrong things can enter in a bad stage. We should take the match to our field and play like we want, we will have more options. We cannot let them spaces, since that would be lethal", he added.

Regarding his special scorer skills in the confrontations with Barça Fernando Torres pointed out that "to some teams you score them more goals than to other, but nothing especial influences. What we want is to win; it doesn’t matter who scores the goals. In the first round match the goal was scored by 'Kun' Agüero."

When he revealed his pool of which team will be the League Champion, Torres said that it is very even. I have seen Barça better than the other ones. The problem is that they have a very complicated calendar, they come to Vicente Calderón and this is a field that is not very well for them. Three disadvantage points and the 'goal-average' lost is a lot of rent to recover. I don’t care who wins the League, I prefer to think on my team. We have healthy envy, especially of Seville, because it should be a mirror for the teams that we want to continue growing. It is maybe the group that more deserves it, because comes from below."

As for the keys to defeat Frank Rijkaard's team, the red-and-white forward highlighted the fast breaks as the best weapon: “we take two years in a row beating them. It’s a rival that has much the ball and is complicated to take it off from then. We have to take advantage of the spaces that they leave to carry out the fast breaks. In the last match against Getafe we were able to see that with spaces we make damage."

Torres also revealed his calculations for the final straight line of the season: "Watching the calendar of our rivals, I think that if we beat Barcelona would have a lot of the road walked. But in the world of the football you cannot trust. Anything getting 6 of the 12 points that are left to conclude the Championship we could get place in Europe."

The bad moment Barça goes through is not, for Fernando, symbol of a cycle end: “It’s a great team and young. One cannot speak about the end of a cycle, because their players are young and with a lot of football inside. When they’ll recover the trust they will be a great team again. I am not inside to know what’s going on around them, but they can fix it. I haven’t seen any team with the level that Barcelona had last year”.

The forward valued very positively getting a place for the UEFA and he clarified that "this team doesn't have the level of the first four classified. We should enter in UEFA and next year to try to catch to the head teams. These teams take together many years and you can feel that. We have a very short squad and we felt the injuries of Miguel de las Cuevas, Maxi, Petrov and Valera. Maybe if we hadn’t had those injuries we would have been fighting with these teams until the end. Our squad is not able to aspire today to compete with Real Madrid or Barcelona, next year of course. We should have a more extensive squad; we have played some matches with 11 players and the rest of the youth squad.

Fernando Torres was also questioned by Javier Aguirre's future and he said that “to get a place for UEFA would be an inflection point so they will trust the coach and the squad. I hope we obtain place for Europe and we start from there building a base for next year”.

Finally he was questioned by his physical shape and his injury in the ankle. “The doctors have told me that from here to the end of season I will continue with nuisances. I feel better and during the week we have had some care", Torres continued saying that “all the players like to play. We depend on us and we can secure the UEFA as soon as possible. It is not necessary that the coach motivates us, since with the rival's entity, every player knows what he has to do."


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