Fernando Torres seeking final redemption after wilderness years

Even in the throes of his greatest achievement in club football, Fernando Torres could not hide his disgust. Four years ago in Munich, as he trooped through the mixed zone at the Allianz Arena with a Champions League winners’ medal in his possession, Torres had something to say.

"In the end I was able to play a bit and help the team but there was huge disappointment when I saw the starting line-up, maybe the biggest disappointment of my life.

"This season I felt things I had never felt [before]. I felt they have treated me in a way I was not expecting; not in the manner for which the club brought me here.

"We have had many conversations and, now the season has finished, we will have more talks to see what happens because this is not the role for which I came. I'm not happy.”

The £50 million superstar signing, a British record, had suffered indignity upon indignity in his first full season at Chelsea and being excluded from the starting line-up against Bayern Munich tipped him over the edge. He wasn’t even asked to take a penalty in the decisive shoot-out when Roberto Di Matteo was identifying the individuals who would etch their names into Chelsea’s history.

Fittingly, it was Didier Drogba, Chelsea’s greatest striker of the modern era, who scored the penalty which crowned the club as European champions.

Triumph and defeat all wrapped up in one tumultuous night. It was Torres’ Chelsea career in microcosm. The striker won the FA Cup and Champions League in his first full season at Stamford Bridge and the Europa League in his second, but still managed to depart the club in 2014 with his reputation as an elite striker having been completely destroyed. Twenty goals in 110 games was not a fitting return for the most expensive Spanish player in history.

It has been a long road back for Torres and yet here he is, four years on from the biggest professional disappointment of his career, back in the Champions League final. This time, with his beloved Atletico Madrid, things will be different. Torres will start the final in Milan against Real Madrid and few players will understand what this night means as the boy who grew up in Fuenlabrada and was christened El Niño when bursting onto the scene with Atleti.

Champions League finals have a habit of eliciting hyperbole and if Munich was the worst night of his career then, addressing the press at San Siro on Friday, Torres talked up the size of the task awaiting him in Italy.

A reminder: this is a man who has won two European Championships and the World Cup.

“There's no doubt this game is the biggest game I will ever play in,” Torres said.

“I'm very happy to be at this club. I started here aged five but this is going to be very different from anything else. I was lucky enough to win this competition with Chelsea [in 2012] and to win lots with Spain – but this is very special for me.

“To me, this means everything – everything you dream of when you're at a club – and now I have the chance to make this dream come true. I've had the opportunity to play for great teams but this is special, different – it's what I wanted when I was a kid, maybe even more than that.

"The club and Diego Simeone gave me the chance to come back and it's been hard. I've had to fight for a place in the team and to score goals.

It means so much to Torres because it is with Atleti. Aside from the Segunda Division title in 2002, his trophies have been won with Spain’s Under-16, Under-19 and senior teams, as well as the three cups lifted at Chelsea. It also means so much to Torres because this is a chance to reassert himself as a top-level striker, at a venue which bore witness to his continued decline, even if it comes too late to prevent Vicente del Bosque axing him from the Spain team for Euro 2016.

It was to Milan that Torres was sent after the conclusion of his unhappy time in Chelsea. In 2014-15 he scored once in 10 league games and was quickly moved on to Atleti in the hope that a return to his first club would help Torres rediscover what once made him one of the most coveted strikers in Europe. Technically, he is still on loan at Atleti from Milan. Diplomatically, Torres professes to be fond of San Siro but the focus is on achieving his dream with Atleti.

“I hope San Siro will be a magical place for the Atletico Madrid fans – one we will always remember and smile about,” he told the world’s media on Friday. “I have many friends here and they will be with Atletico Madrid. Let's hope everyone can join in a special and historic night for Atletico.”

It could be his last game for the club. After he scored six goals in seven starts - a rare flourishing of the prolific Torres we saw at Liverpool - Diego Simeone suggested earlier this month that he could be handed a new contract when his current deal expires at the end of the season.

But with just one goal en route to the Champions League final in Milan he has been firmly in the shadow of Antoine Griezmann, even if the hard work he has put in at the age of 32 has not gone unnoticed.

The Torres of the past six seasons has proven that the Torres of that golden era at Liverpool - 72 goals in 116 games between 2007 and 2010 - was a glorious anomaly. But goals are not everything, and the striker has amassed a trophy collection that some of the all-time greats cannot match.

Starting and winning the Champions League final with his boyhood club, at a juncture of his career when Spain have dropped him and his legacy is under assault, would top the lot.