Who would have told Ferran Torres from last season that he would have such a decisive role in Xavi’s Barça right now. And who would have also told that Ferran Torres that in his 100th game with the Blaugranas he would score his first hat-trick with the club and in the League.
The Valencian striker has had different sporting and psychological ups and downs during his stay in Barcelona. Last year he started in bad taste: denied the goal, substitute and emotionally collapsed. “I felt like he had fallen into a bottomless pit. I had never collapsed so much,” he then explained to the press. However, he vowed to improve his situation: “I promised Xavi that he would be me again.”
It seems, then, that the promise has been fulfilled. After the hat trick in the victory against Betis (2-4), the Valencian assured that he is experiencing “the best moment” of his football career. “I think I’m in the best moment of my career, in which I have the most confidence, in which I feel mentally stronger.”
The 23-year-old attacker stressed the great importance that mental health has for a professional footballer and stressed mentality as the starting point to “be well on and off the field of play.”
When more unknowns hung over his future, Ferran redoubled the bet on himself: “I arrived at this beginning of the season in my best moment, with a very changed mentality. I was able to change a situation in which I found it very difficult to have minutes and opportunities. To that people know that nothing is impossible, that it is necessary to work and in the end everything comes.
With the hat-trick and the assist he signed last Sunday against Betis, Ferran reached 11 goals and 3 assists in the 1,518 minutes he has played this season, spread over 29 games, 16 as a starter. In this way, he has already surpassed the 7 goals and 3 assists he scored last season in a total of 1,853 minutes spread over 45 games, starting from the start in 18 of them.
Likewise, Ferran Torres is currently Barça’s second top scorer behind Robert Lewandowski, who has 12 goals and 4 assists. All in all, Ferran is the forward of the squad with the best scoring average, since he scores a goal every 138 minutes, ahead of the Pole.
Thus, it seems that the psychological work carried out by the player progressively gives its results. Xavi certified it yesterday at a press conference: “This is the fruit of work and discipline and the perseverance of believing in oneself.” “In the summer he sent me a message telling me that he planned to succeed at Barça, and that’s how he is. He is one of the players with the greatest mental strength that I have encountered in my career,” added the Barça coach.