Torres: The Bright World

This was a thrilling match. An absolute hum-dinger of an affair. A match between the two top favourites of the Premiership this season. Two teams in good form. And a match befitting of its status.

 

Watching Fernando Torres come back to form is something like watching a superhero getting back his superpowers. His pace is back. His directness and confidence seems to be back. The flailing long hair has long gone but the look in his eyes is there. And this match has provided further testament to the fact that finally, at long last, the old Torres is back. And if he is indeed back to his best, who can challenge Chelsea to be Premiership champions?

 

He may have embarrassingly missed a gilt-edged chance in the first half when he was wide open after beating the offside trap, but the impressive thing is that rather than getting despondent and into recluse, it seemed to galvanise him and he never looked back. Witness his patented burst of acceleration past a startled Gael Clichy (who is no slouch for pace, by the way) down the right flank and cross for Andre Schurrle's opening goal. It was a classic Torres moment: lithe, manoeuvring his slim body with good balance past the defender who is beaten and can't recover in time. And then moments later, he side-steps Pablo Zabaleta and unleashes a confident, exorbitant long-range drive that cannons off the cross-bar with Joe Hart well-beaten. That was the moment that told me the old Torres is back.

 

Sergio Aguero scored early in the second half to bring Manchester City level; a Goal-of-the-Season contender, I would say. A thunderous, sudden left-footed thing that rocked the Chelsea goal and left Petr Cech gasping for thin air. But in the end, when it looked like it was gonna be a hard-earned draw for both sides, up stepped England's No. 1 Hart to truly mess it up for the visitors. This was not just a bad mistake, it was a calamitous mistake. In the final minute of a hard-fought game that you just don't want to lose, you really don't want to make mistakes like that.

 

But from substitute Willian's speculative long ball down the middle, it looked like a hopeless cause for Chelsea. But suddenly, Hart gets the proverbial fire up his backside and charges out into no-man's land. Matija Nastasic, who up till that point had the situation under control, somehow fails to see his onrushing goalkeeper and heads it back to nobody in particular. Torres rushes in to steal all three points for Chelsea. Jose Mourinho was living it up on the sidelines, and Chelsea go up to second in the league. Their home form continues to be imperious.