AC Milan Coach Filippo Inzaghi Must Be Brave and Stick with Fernando Torres

The goals will come. The coach is sure of it. 

After all, Fernando Torres has been playing through an ankle injury.

“I hope Torres will be like [Hernan] Crespo under [Carlo] Ancelotti, who for months didn’t score, then he broke his duck and became...Crespo,” coach Pippo Inzaghi told Corriere della Sera (h/t Football Italia) earlier in the week.

Crespo arrived in Milan on loan from Chelsea at around the same age as Torres and like the Spaniard went goalless for the majority of the first three months at the club. The Argentinian ended up scoring 16 goals that season—including two goals in the Champions League final, which Milan ultimately lost.

There is always a grace period for players like Torres switching leagues. Serie A is his third. He did not join them in time for pre-season training, and that’s huge. But there is something else weighing on the 30-year-old: There is a perception that he is finished and far from the player who scored at will with Liverpool. 

Torres has a lot to prove, even at 30 years old and having won virtually every trophy in the game. And that is why Inzaghi is right to trust that the striker will eventually come good. 

The motivation and desire is there. Torres wants to play for the Spain national team again, and he will only do that if he starts scoring. So far, he has only managed one goal—the only one scored by a Milan striker in this season. That statistic is depressing.

Torres is not fully to blame. He is not exactly apathetic on the field, he chases lost causes and tries to fetch the ball by himself. The service is just not coming his way.

The source of that problem is the midfield, which is creatively bankrupt. Riccardo Montolivo is the immediate answer, and once he returns to the lineup so too will a sense of imagination. 

But at a certain point, it is incumbent for Torres to start creating things on his own. He was never the kind of player to play with his back to goal; he made his name as a mobile forward who could find a goal around the 18-yard box. He was devastating.

And he has to convert the chances he does get. He has 19 shots in nine games, and some of those should have been goals.

Maybe he needs a big game to rev him up. Torres has scored in each of the Madrid, Merseyside and west London derbies. Don’t forget that winner against Germany in the Euro 2008 final or crucial insurance goal at Barcelona, either. Torres has made an impression on local rivalries, and Inter could be next. 

Maybe symmetry counts too. Crespo scored his first goal for AC Milan on Nov. 24. Torres and Milan will play Inter on Nov. 23.