Fernando Torres strikes again in first 40 seconds but Atletico Madrid still exits Copa del Rey
In a weird and wacky Spanish Cup quarterfinal second leg – won 3-2 by Barcelona over Atletico Madrid for a 4-2 aggregate score – which saw everything you can possibly see on a soccer field, including Arda Turan chucking his shoe at a linesman in frustration (just about breaking the Internet), the rarest occurrence of all was made manifest. Fernando Torres scored again.
The Kid is like a child again.
Not quite 40 seconds into the game, El Niño took a quick touch on a pass to slide the ball away from stumbling defender Javier Mascherano and, before the Argentine could recover, quickly hit his shot from outside the box. From there, it skipped and pinged in off the far post magnificently.
It was an instinctual kind of goal. The sort that he had made his name on at Atletico, when he scored 75 goals in his first five seasons in La Liga. It displayed the pace and touch that bagged him 65 goals in his 3½ campaigns with Liverpool in the English Premier League. It had the ease and grace that suddenly eluded him after his mega-transfer to Chelsea in the winter of 2011, when he mysteriously misplaced his preternatural facility for putting the ball in the net.
[FC Yahoo: The real reason why Barcelona might end its Qatar shirt sponsorship]
Now, suddenly, having returned him from a failed spell with AC Milan, the Torres of old has risen. He scored twice against Real Madrid in the last round of this tournament, seeing to it that Atletico would advance over their archrivals. And then he scored against Barca on Wednesday.
Form is a funny thing.
Feeling light again, after years of lumbering heavily under the weight of expectations and the cumulative heft of failure, there is that spring in his steps. Instead of toiling desperately in hopes of forcing another chance to finally put away, soccer comes easy to him again.
Suddenly flush with confidence, Torres attempted – and completed – backheel passes. He tried things he never would have just a few weeks ago, having finally been cured of a deep and dark case of the yips.
At halftime, he got into a scuffle with Barca's wonder boy Neymar.
Torres is Atletico's own wonder boy again. After four years of hunching, he walks tall once more.
Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.
