The Sergio Thread

Oh dear


A pathetic attempt at defending your internet girlfriend

 

The legend speaks:Banana: :Banana: :Banana:

SERGIO Torres will prepare for tomorrow's promotion six-pointer against Chesterfield in the same way that he prepares for every game - with a long distance phone call to his parents in Argentina.

He will tell his dad that, in his opinion, the sixth-placed Spireites are the best team Wanderers have faced this season and tell him that he and Wycombe will have to be at their best to beat them.

After the match, he will pick up the telephone again to disect the match with his dad, 7,000 miles away in Mar Del Plata, the city Torres left behind four-years ago to carve out a career in England.

Not that the Wycombe midfielder hasn't thought about going back.

Just 13 months ago he was feeling so low that he was ready to return to Argentina.

The reason - he was suffering with a tendon injury and couldn't play football.

His dad and his mum, who had originally begged him not to come to England, persuaded him to tough it out.

Torres said: "I couldn't see the positives any more but my family came over in December and they really helped me.

"I'd had four or five months in the physio room and didn't seem to be getting anywhere. I was thinking about leaving and going home because I was so down but my family really helped me and talked me round."

Family is hugely important to Torres. His sister Rosana is getting married in June and Sergio is buying her wedding dress.

He said: "I had to tell her not to get married in May just in case we were in the play-offs.

"It would be the best feeling in the world to go back for the wedding having won promotion."

It was a massive wrench for him to leave his family behind four years ago to take up the offer of a trial with Brighton.

He said: "When Carlo Tevez moved over here he came with his whole family. But I wasn't able to do that, I had to come on my own.

"I just had an aeroplane ticket and a lot of hope, I didn't know much English. I could say, hello my name is Sergio and I'm from Argentina, I knew the numbers and the colours but it was very hard to understand people and I didn't know what the people at Brighton were talking about."

Brighton sent him packing and Torres can see why.

He said: "When I was on trial at Brighton I only played when I had the ball at my feet. I never tackled and didn't work hard.

"Mark McGhee manager told me I wasn't strong or fit enough for English football and that motivated me. It gave me more encouragement and I thought maybe you're right now but I will get myself fit enough and strong enough.

"I have changed my game now and I'd love to get promoted so that we can play Brighton next year. I know he's not the manager any more and it's not that I want to prove Brighton wrong because they probably weren't at the time."

Much to his mother's dismay he stayed in England, got a job working in Boots and signed for non-league Basingstoke.

He said: "I thought Basingstoke was my level and I was really happy playing for them and working in Boots."

But a stunning performance against Wycombe in a pre-season friendly persuaded Wycombe boss John Gorman to sign him.

But even then the transformation to a professional wasn't easy.

He said: "I didn't have much money, when I was at Basingtoke I cycled to my job at Boots.

"But when I moved to Wycombe, John Gorman wouldn't let me cycle to training because he said I'd be too tired. I had to catch two buses from my house in Totteridge. It used to take me ages. It took me three years for me to get enough money to get my Renault Megane and it's much better now."

And life is much better for Torres now. He has been one of the mainstays of Blues side this season featuring in every league game and he's hoping Wanderers will offer him a new contract when his current deal expires in the summer.

He said: "I thank God that I stayed here. Playing against Chelsea last year was the best day of my life. I was interviewed in the big national sports paper Ole in Argentina and when I go home to Mar del Plata the local paper always does an interview with me about my time at WWFC.

"I'm very proud of myself for what I've achieved and I'm proud because I have made my family proud of me.

"I love it in England, I love the football and Wycombe Wanderers but I hate the weather. We have a lovely beach in Mar Del Plata and my parents ring me from there and all I've seen here for two weeks is rain and more rain."

Now Torres, who was born in 1981 - the year Argentinians Osvaldo Ardiles and Ricky Villa were winning the FA Cup for Spurs - is looking to extend his career in England.

His Wanderers contract expires in the summer and Torres is hoping it will be extended.

He said: "The club have looked after me and the fans really seem to like me and when they sing my name it is the most beautiful feeling.

"I'm not thinking about playing for another club because I am so happy here. I am ambitious like every other player but I haven't heard of anyone being interested in me."

 

The legend is in the national press again

The Buckinghamshire Maradona in a league of his own
There's another Torres in English football this season, and Wycombe Wanderers' Sergio is bringing Argentinian flair to League Two
Barney RonayFebruary 1, 2008 11:51 AM
Sergio Torres is an extremely unusual footballer. This much becomes clear the first time you see him: the only man in the Wycombe Wanderers team with long hair and white boots, he's also the only player on either side whose name inspires a shriek of delight - equal parts hero-worshipping small boy to teenage girl groupie - as the teams are announced for Wycombe's vital League Two home game with Chesterfield. Torres doesn't just look different; he's surely unique at this level or any other. The only Argentinian to have had a trial with Boca Juniors and stacked shelves in Boots. And the only player, to date, to glory in the nickname of The Basingstoke Maradona.

English footballers have been criticised - particularly recently as the national game indulges in one of its cyclical bouts of self-loathing - for their insularity, their failure to look beyond their horizons, the failure above all to travel. Torres stands as a living reproach. Here is an Argentinian with an EU passport (via an Italian grandmother) attacking the English football pyramid from the bottom up. He's winning too. In three years, Torres has worked his way up from the depths of non-League Moseley to the professional game's fourth tier. It's not clear what heights he might yet reach. But one thing seems sure - Torres is not finished yet.

The man from Mar del Plata's history is so extraordinary it's already the stuff of lower-league legend, but it bears repeating. Torres was just another Argentinian footballer, an attacking midfielder with his local team when, in 2004, he decided to jump ship and have a stab at making it in England. His highlights video was seen by then Brighton manager Mark McGhee and he was invited for a trial. Torres blew his savings on an air ticket and washed up on the south coast.

His first few weeks here were horribly bleak. McGhee told him he would never make it in England. He found himself sharing a house - and even a bed - with a group of similarly itinerant and penniless Cameroonians. But Torres hung in there. Two months of playing for Moseley led him to Basingstoke Town later that year.

This was the harshest of baptisms - it was at Basingstoke that Torres experienced the only hostility he has faced as an Argentinian in England. "They were telling me very very bad things. About the war and about my mum. I nearly got sent off," he admits. "But it was only in non-league. Not in this league at all." The style of play was something of a culture shock too. "That was where I learned the physical side of the game. There we just played long ball. I was playing centre midfield and I never had the ball on the floor. I had to fight for second balls. It was very difficult at first."

To pay his way, Torres got a job stacking shelves in a branch of Boots off the A40. This involved getting up at 5am on a Saturday, cycling to work, putting in a full shift, cycling to Basingstoke and then playing a match. "The first time I did this I was falling asleep in the dressing room while the manager was talking to us before the game," he recalls. "The strange thing is I got man of the match that day. But it was hard. The hardest thing I've ever done." Not that he has any regrets. In fact, his old boss from Boots is now his best friend in England, and was in the crowd for last month's Chesterfield game.

Torres' big moment came in July 2005. Basingstoke lost 8-2 in a friendly against Wycombe, then managed by John Gorman, who was sufficiently impressed with the the long-haired left-sided player to offer him a two-year contract. There were glimpses of something special over the next two years, in between a series of niggling injuries. This season, given an injury-free run, Torres has blossomed. Talk of a move to the Championship has begun to flutter about the place. Nottingham Forest are rumoured to be lining up a summer bid, although Torres claims to know nothing about this. It's a question that lingers over him at Wycombe now. Here is a player who would surely benefit from a little more time on the ball playing at a higher level.

"Every player has ambitions and wants to do their best and make their family proud. I want to get promotion with Wycombe this year. But a few people have said I might take to playing at a higher level with my style of play. I don't know. I've never played there. People say you have a bit more time on the ball, it's less physical," he shrugs. Ten minutes into the Chesterfield game, it's clear how hard a player like Torres has to work to make his mark at this level. Wycombe and Chesterfield are among the more patient teams in League Two. But the Spireites are also, to a man, physically enormous. By the end of the game, two of Wycombe's players have left the field with concussion. This is not football for the faint-hearted.

Torres' first touch is a bruising aerial challenge. He then spends half an hour tracking back and making some neat tackles. When he does finally get on the ball he glides past three men, drawing chants of "SER-GI-OH-OH!" from the home fans. This is another interesting thing about Torres. He's not just an Argentinian footballer. He's an Argentinian footballer. You get the full repertoire. An overhead kick skews just wide. There's a lofted, lift-over-the-top pass. While keeping the ball by the corner flag towards the final whistle, he does a groovy step-over shuffle, completely out of kilter with everything else in a relentlessly high tempo game. Foreign players are an oddity at this level. Torres is the only one in the Wycombe side and the only player constantly calling for the ball to his feet. He gets kicked, but not as much as you might think.

Wycombe end up winning 1-0 thanks to Scott McGleish's first-half screamer. Torres is one of the last men off the pitch as the whole team stays to applaud the home fans. The place thrums with genuine affection, in that restrained, familial way you find at some lower-league football grounds. Everybody knows everybody here, and everybody has a good word for "Serge". Not that Torres is the type to have problems settling anywhere. Having arrived here able to say nothing more than "Hello my name is Sergio", his English is now flawless.

"The three lads in centre midfield were brilliant today. We created loads of chances," he says, with even a faint local twang. Torres is now known as the Buckinghamshire Maradona, but he's a hard-working Maradona. The most notable aspect of his performance was his non-stop running. "The manager [Paul Lambert] always talks about that. You have to defend as well as attack. In my country I never did that. I was just playing behind the striker and I never tackled. I played when I had the ball."

His role models growing up were Diego Maradona ("any Argentinian will say the same") and the Real Zaragoza attacker Pablo Aimar ("I love him"). In England he has had to master other kinds of skills. "Here I learned the different side of the game. That's why I like English football. Everyone gives 100% every time, every game."

It's clear Torres has embraced English football, not just its methods but its language. It seems surprising that he doesn't come from a footballing family. In fact his upbringing was relatively affluent and he abandoned a higher education course as a PE teacher to come here. "We were middle class. My family owns a brick factory. I used to work there. That's one reason why I needed to try my luck in another country. It was such hard work, particularly in the summer when it was 40C. But everyone plays football in Argentina, from the poor to the rich."

Does Torres feel like an English player now? "Well, not exactly like an English player because I love tricks and I love to play on the floor. But I have changed a lot. I would love to go back to Argentina and see how I've progressed. I've changed so much. If you say an English player in the Premier League I would say yes, I like to play like that. In this league you don't see many players who like to pass the ball on the floor."

Torres may not be planning on going anywhere soon. Still, it's tempting to hope that any move to a higher level comes sooner rather than later, if only to see where his ascent through English football's foothills might end. English football - besieged by its own anxieties about overseas players - could do worse than seek out a few more like the man from Mar del Plata.


http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/02/01/the_buckinghamshire_maradona_i.html

 

To see you're next installment of Sergio on national media tune into ITV1's 'The Championship' on Sunday morning at 10am where he shall be interviewed.

 

Sergio > Jesus

FACT