Fernando Torres has a chance to redefine himself at AC Milan

The Spaniard has the chance to put his miserable time at Chelsea behind him in Serie A.

Fernando Torres has proven a hit with AC Milan fans already. Luca Bruno / AP Photo

The Spaniard's reputation fell in barren times at Chelsea, but he does not have to look far for inspiration at Milan, writes Ian Hawkey
If Fernando Torres, once the most expensive Spaniard in football history and not too long ago the costliest player in the British game, wanted a prototype for the kind of striker he might become in his 30s, he could do worse than look at Filippo Inzaghi.
Inzaghi, once of Juventus, Italy and AC Milan, had superb and abundant goalscoring skills and maintained them. He was a devastating marksman right up until he was 38, when he netted the last of his almost 200 Serie A goals.
That sixth sense of where to be, at just the right moment, was Inzaghi's special knack. He was the penalty-area predator supreme, not a forward who dropped deep especially cleverly or slammed in missiles from 30 yards, but an accumulator of enough tap-ins that contemporaries would study who he ghosted suddenly towards the near post or the far one.
Inzaghi preserved that dart of pace that makes great counter-attackers by always playing off the shoulder of defenders, even when his knees were worn and his facial features wrinkled.
Inzaghi was appointed head coach at AC Milan this summer, a couple of months before his 41st birthday, just over two years after his last match for the club.
Tomorrow night, he should give a Serie A debut to Torres, at Parma, and hopes it will be the first step in restoring a fine striker's reputation.
Torres, loaned to Milan by Chelsea just before the last transfer window closed, inherits the red-and-black No 9 jersey from the departed Mario Balotelli, who in the summer's whirligig of moving centre-forwards, has joined the Liverpool where Torres, now 30, enjoyed his pre-eminent years.
On arrival at Milan, the Spaniard admitted he could see his chances of first XI starts evaporating at Chelsea - who paid £50 million (Dh297.8m) to Liverpool for him three-and-a-half years ago - when Diego Costa landed in west London from Atletico Madrid, where Torres had been club captain as a teenager and where he made his name.
Inzaghi is clear about the challenge. "It's up to me to get the best out of each of my strikers," he said at a Uefa coaches seminar last week.
"I have several in the squad and I look at the situation as being spoiled for choice."
Torres was coming out of what Inzaghi acknowledged to be "a difficult year".
"But he has great desire and I can see how much he respects Milan the club," he said.
Should Inzaghi, in his first senior job as a coach after being promoted from working with Milan's under-19 squad, coax from the Spaniard something resembling his best, he will have done better than Jose Mourinho, who gave a green light to Torres's departure from Stamford Bridge, or Rafa Benitez, Mourinho's predecessor at Chelsea, or Andre Villas Boas, or Carlo Ancelotti or Vicente Del Bosque.
All of those have, mostly with patience and perseverance, overseen a period of decline in the striker's effectiveness.
The Torres who struck 24 Premier League goals in his first season, 2007-08, with Liverpool and crowned that campaign with the match winner for Spain in the Euro 2008 final, scored five league goals for Chelsea last term, part of an overall pattern that now looks stark.
From the ages of 19 to 26, in Atletico and Liverpool teams who seldom challenged for titles, he would always be well into double figures for league goals. At Chelsea, he never did.
Inzaghi may also have note that Torres has a habit of coming good on big occasions. He was the leading scorer at Euro 2012, even having lost his starting place with Spain, and Chelsea would not have won the 2013 Uefa Europa League without Torres's goals.
Milan have no European competition to offer Torres before May and Inzaghi is right to observe that, in a Milan squad well capable of finishing in the top three, there are alternatives up front should Torres struggle.
Stephan El-Shaarwary, the Italy international, troubled by injury for much of the past 18 months, looked lively in the win over Lazio, Inzaghi's first match as a top-flight manager.
Jeremy Menez, of France, has joined from Paris Saint-Germain, Giampaolo Pazzini knows his way around Serie A defences, and Milan hope Mbaye Niang, the French-Senegalese teenager, will this season begin to show a level of maturity equal to his talent.
Against that competition, Torres cannot help but sense his first few outings in Italy have the flavour of auditions.
If he fails them, even his most loyal backers must face the possibility his peaks may now be in the past.
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