Nine, I know about his goal record before he signed for us. Goals scored isn’t how you measure someone’s profile in the sport though and for me Torres had a huge profile ever since he was a teenager. Utd (and apparently Chelsea) had failed in a bid to sign him at least once , a year before we did and the £22m that we paid for him was considered to be a steal as previous bids were for more, it broke our transfer record too so it wasn’t small money either.
Chelsea’s bid was apparently £28m, for an 18 year old striker who was named captain of his team before he hit 20.
Now, I don’t have a great memory but where I think a lot of the hype around Torres started was from his performances in Internationals at a youth level. he seemed to be the great white hope of the new generation for Spain.
Now, although I think he had an absolutely massive profile when we signed him, it is at Liverpool that he went from “world class potential” to “world class ability”, so I understand why you might say he wasn’t a superstar etc. . I even struggle with that actual term because it’s hard to pin down in a definition when you’re talking about something that isn’t exactly localised (club/world football).
The reason I’ve gone into all this is because when Torres is arguably the biggest name that Liverpool have signed in decades, at the time of their signing. Now I think people might strongly disagree with this but signing Torres was an incredibly exciting thing for me as a fan. I also remember Litmanen, another massive name even if he wasn’t exactly at his peak.