What's Gone Wrong for Ignored Oliver Torres at Atletico Madrid?

Football has a habit of regularly leaving eggs on faces, as the next big thing quietly slides away from view to become just another failed wonderkid.

Circumstance is as big a reason for this as anything else, as players need the right environments to flourish, with the right managers and coaches trusting them at just right time. Get everything right and they can fly, but struggle and it won’t be long before they are out of the team—or even out of the club.

Which brings us to Atletico Madrid and Oliver Torres.

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When the highly rated Spain youth international midfielder spent the 2014/15 season on loan at FC Porto, Atletico fans were able to keep track of his performances with pride.

They saw a lively midfielder with an attacking edge to him, who would go on to score seven times in 41 appearances as Porto finished second in the table and reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League. Here was a youngster that they knew was going to come back a better player, and that was certainly what he did.

Buoyed by his inclusion on the shortlist for Europe’s Golden Boy Award for 2014—the prize handed out to the continent’s best young player, which was won by England’s Raheem Sterling that year—Torres seemed to be on a fast track to superstardom. It was inevitable that he would return to Atletico and shine there.

And for a while that was exactly what happened.

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After coming back from Porto, he was a regular in Atletico manager Diego Simeone’s side at the beginning of the 2015/16 season, often seen as a more-than-useful substitute and scoring a fine chipped goal against FC Astana in the Champions League.

There were even suggestions—and suggestions on these pages—that he could possibly gatecrash Spain’s squad for Euro 2016, with Simeone apparently having an almost unshakable belief in the youngster’s ability.

Michael Yokhin’s profile on Torres for ESPN FC from January 2015—when he was still at Porto—seemed to spell that out, recalling just how the manager gave the youngster his break to begin with.

Yokhin wrote:

"

Diego Simeone, who never hesitates to give youngsters their chances—as demonstrated by his handling of Luciano Vietto at Racing Club—surprised Oliver when he called him up to the first team before he had made his debut for Atletico B.

In April 2012, long before his 18th birthday, Torres found himself on the bench in La Liga. In August, he debuted for the first team against Levante.

"

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So the manager still believed in him, and the loan at Porto was just seen as a switch to gain experience at a major club in a major league, as well as in the Champions League.

As 2015/16 developed—and with Arda Turan having gone to Barcelona—Torres, in the Turkey international’s old No. 10 shirt, was getting more and more football. He looked at home at Atletico.

In October 2015, FourFourTwo’s Jon Radcliffe heaped praise on the youngster. He wrote:

"

Torres is everything you would expect of a young Spanish midfielder: technically gifted with the ball at his feet, making him an able passer.

The [then] 20-year-old circulates possession quickly, and despite only recently starting out on his journey as a professional footballer, his vision and calmness on the ball is already better than some who have been in the game much longer.

He has also already proven to be versatile, having played right across Atletico’s midfield this season. It all contributes to a player who has the intelligence and ability to read the game well beyond his years, and it’s no surprise that Simeone has shown his trust.

"

What could possibly go wrong? Here was a young player making his mark at one of the biggest clubs in the world and doing it very well. He seemed to have the world at his feet.

Yet as the campaign went on and the matches grew more and more important, his influence lessened.

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His last meaningful start came in the goalless draw at PSV Eindhoven in the first leg of the last 16 of the Champions League in February. He would appear just five more times over the campaign, the final one coming as a much-changed side beat Rayo Vallecano 1-0 in a league match between the two legs of the Champions League semi-final.

So why was he now being cast aside? Well, the answer lies in those two glowing profiles of him referenced above.

While Yokhin was effusive in his praise for Torres for ESPN FC when referencing his early days in the squad, he also warned:

"

Oliver's progress at Atletico wasn't too fast, however. One of the problems is Simeone's tactics don't really have room for the role of Xavi [a player he had been compared to], and Torres was mostly used on the wing when he got his rare chances.

"

Radcliffe went even further for FourFourTwo and added:

"

Torres could certainly improve physically, as he is somewhat lacking in the defensive department – last season with Porto he averaged only 1.6 tackles and 1.3 interceptions per game; this year in La Liga he’s only hitting 1.8 tackles and 0.8 interceptions.

It’s partly because of his slender 5ft 10in frame, but mainly due to the fact he hasn’t completed more than 70 minutes of a match this season. While the former may not have been a problem for players such as Xavi, Torres still has a way to go reach their level on the ball.

"

As the matches were getting bigger and more important, Simeone was reverting to type.

He was packing the midfield with stronger, tougher players who weren’t perhaps as good on the ball as Torres but would expend a lot of their energy in trying to win it back and in closing down the opposition.

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Even though Tiago’s broken leg ruled him out for the second half of 2015/16, the minutes on the pitch were going to players such as Gabi, Augusto Fernandez and the energetic Thomas Partey. Obviously Koke remained a key player, and the rapid emergence of Saul Niguez as a potentially world-class midfield player meant Torres was a little left out.

With Simeone happy to string four "central" midfield players across the pitch and then rely on the likes of Yannick Carrasco for something different, it became easy to overlook the former golden boy.

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If anything, the signing of Nicolas Gaitan this summer suggested that the writing was on the wall for Torres, and two years after he arrived at Porto with high hopes of developing his game to the extent where he’d become indispensable to Atleti, he’s now back there again.

Of course, there is still hope for him, and no-one has ever got anywhere by writing off a 21-year-old, but right now he looks to be a casualty of Simeone’s safety-first game plan, and of the Argentinian’s desire to control a game rather than go out to win it.

Torres is likely to be back at Atletico next summer, at which point it really could be make-or-break for his career there.

His only hope is that his absence makes Simeone’s heart grow fonder.