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Fernando Torres endured a torrid time in his 3-year spell at Chelsea, and one man who knows everything about it, Mikel Obi, has revealed exactly what went wrong.

Super Eagles of Nigeria and former Chelsea midfielder Mikel Obi has lifted the lid on Torres’s struggles at Stamford Bridge after the Spaniard made the move from Anfield.

Mikel Obi, while speaking on his The Obi One Podcast, said Torres worked really hard in training and that the 2018 European Championship winner visited the gym and the physios, but it was really not working. 

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What Mikel Obi said

The former Super Eagles captain said: “I remember before he signed, I had a chat, I’m not going to mention with who, I said, are you sure? I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll, yeah, we’ll risk it. We’ll pay 50 million.”

“Yeah, we’ll risk it. I’m like, are you sure about this? Yeah, yeah, because he hasn’t played for Liverpool.

“And then he had that massive injury and we just thought, okay, and then the club decided to risk it. Roman obviously and Marina decided to risk it. You know, and it just didn’t work out for him.

“I remember being at the club with him at Chelsea. He was trying everything, he was at the gym, he was with physios, he was trying, he was pushing himself, but it just wasn’t happening. And I felt so, I felt so sorry for him, because he was putting in so much effort because he wanted to come back.”

Analysis – How good was Fernando Torres?

Before moving to Liverpool in 2007, Fernando Torres was the main man at Atlético Madrid where he scored 129 goals and provided 21 assists in 403 games.

El Nino, as he’s fondly called, hit the ground running at Merseyside, and there were very few strikers in England and Europe between 2008 and 2011 who could match the firepower and sheer brilliance of Fernando Torres.

The Spaniard was a menace, tormenting formidable defences and taking renowned defenders to the cleaners. This was how brilliant Torres was, so much so that Chelsea had to splash out £50m – a British transfer record for his signature on transfer deadline day in January 2011.

Then Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti was already dreaming of a deadly attacking trio in Didier Drogba, Nicolas Anelka, and Fernando Torres. However, it was an experiment that did not yield any meaningful results, as the Blues lost 1-0 to Liverpool in Torres’ debut, courtesy of a Raul Meireles strike. 

Not only that, the ego at Stamford Bridge, with neither Drogba nor Anelka willing to sit on the bench for Torres. There were games where Torres could have been put through on goal, but his strike partners refused to pass the ball to the Spaniard and instead opted to go alone.

These issues, including a few injuries, affected Torres’ confidence, and he was not the same player that joined from Liverpool. The huge transfer fee he commanded was also a burden on his shoulders, and he always felt he needed to justify Chelsea’s investment with commensurate performances, but unfortunately, they never came.  

However, in 2012, Fernando Torres scored one of the most important goals in Chelsea’s history at the Nou Camp as the Blues (playing with a man down) clawed back to play 2-2 with Barcelona and seal a 3-2 aggregate win to book a place in the UEFA Champions League final which they won on penalties against Bayern Munich. 

There seems to be a consensus among many Blues fans that Torres’s goal, where he rounded Victor Valdes before scoring into an open net, more than repaid Chelsea’s £50m investment, as it was a pivotal moment for the London club to win it first-ever UCL trophy. 

Torres played 172 games for Chelsea, scoring 45 goals and registering 29 assists. These numbers pale in comparison to his time at Liverpool, where he played less number of games (142) but was effective, scoring 81 goals and adding 19 assists.

Now 40 years old, Fernando Torres, who retired from active football in 2019, has taken up another job on the sidelines after he was named the manager of Atletico Madrid B.