Analyzing Barcelona and Ferran Torres: The Perfect Match?
Regarded highly as a very talented and exciting prospect by many in the footballing world, Ferran Torres Garcia was born in the Foios community in Valencia on the the 29th of February, 2000. Joining Valencia’s fabled youth setup in 2006, just as the age of 6, Ferran made his senior debut for the reserve team on 15 October, 2016, at 16 years of age. After being promoted to the Valencia B-team in the 2017–18 season, Ferran was strongly linked to both of the Spanish Giants, Barcelona and Real Madrid. However, he decided to stay and renewed his contract, increasing his release clause to 25M Euros. Torres made his first team debut on November 30, 2017 in a Copa del Rey match against Real Zaragoza. And honestly, he hasn’t looked back since then.
On 23 November, 2019, Ferran Torres became the youngest Los Ches player to play 50 matches in the La Liga at the age of 19 years and 254 days, breaking a 38 year old record set by Miguel Tendillo (19 years and 351 days). On 4 August 2020, English giants Manchester City announced the signing of Ferran Torres, on a five year contract till 2025 for a reported transfer fee of 23M Euros. On arriving at City, Torres inherited the no. 23 jersey, worn by another ex-Valencia player, David Silva. Notably, he also won the 2017 and 2019 Euros U-17 and U-19 respectively before earning his senior team debut on 3 September, against Germany. Although he hasn’t featured much at City, he shone whenever he got the chance, scoring goals and impressing with his performances.
Style of Play
One of Ferran’s most impressing attribute is his versatility. The 21 year old Spaniard can play both as a LW and a RW, where he can be used both as a traditional winger or an inverted one, thanks to his blistering pace. Not only that, he can also play as a striker, where he, with his expert movements often gets himself into goalscoring positions, something that even impressed Pep Guardiola. Let’s say that’s something he picked up when training with Sergio Aguero. This technically gifted player can play in a lot of setups. He excels in possession based football, such as under Pep, thanks to his elite ball control and touch and could also play in a counter-attacking system due to his pace.
As a left winger, he tends to invert and shoot with his right foot. As a right winger, he is seen more to hug the sidelines and dribble his way into the box and launch a cross.
Here’s a little dashboard I made on his shots. As we can see, he is more comfortable shooting with his right, but doesn’t mind using the left.
His strengths and weaknesses
Ferran tends to hug the sidelines as a winger, from where he would dribble past the defenders to get in scoring areas. When facing overloads on the wings, he tends to drift into the half spaces to combine with the forwards. Due to his style of play, it should be interesting to see how his arrival helps full backs like Dest and Alves, who would be a constant passing option to the Spaniard. At City we see the centre forward pulling back the defenders, allowing Torres to run into space. His arrival to Barca would also fix their problems against low blocks, with his movements and especially his diagonal runs in behind the defense. Him dropping down and thus pulling the defenders could also allow the full backs to make underlapping runs.
As mentioned earlier, one of his foremost attributes is his versatility. He can play both as a RW and LW, and he was often seen switching position under Luis Enrique’s Spain.
As seen above, Torres scores two goals, in the span of 20 minutes, one from the right winger and other from the left wing, in Spain’s 6–1 thrashing of Germany. This trait of Torres could very much be utilized in Barca under Xavi.
He’s also an expert in his movement, always getting into prime goalscoring positions.
See how he recognizes the pass, and immediately changes his direction to make a run between the defenders and finish it off with a delightful finish. As a striker he also tends to drop down and lurk behind, to move into goalscoring areas and finish when he gets the chance.
Now that we’ve talked about his strengths, let’s come into the not-so-good part, his weaknesses.
While he has to improve on 1v1 duels or even dribbling past players on a regular basis, he has shown that he can carry forward the effectively with his blistering pace. Also, at a height of 184 cm and weighing about 77kg, he certainly is a lanky figure that could be troubled against physical teams (like his former team Valencia for example). He also has to improve his contribution in his team’s buildup.
Last season, Ferran Torres was placed 4th from the bottom in terms of xG Buildup in a dominant City team, indicating that he has to improve his involvement in the team’s buildup. This is exactly what makes him more of a the traditional number 9 than a false 9.
Role at Barca
At Barca, with their current goalscoring drought, Ferran is expected to take on more goalscoring responsiblity than ever. Under Xavi, I would expect him to start as a number 9 until Memphis returns. With Barcelona’s current medical track record, it is highly likely Memphis will relapse. I would expect Torres to start as a striker, with Abde on the right and Dembele on the left. That’s the ideal long-term attacking trio. Once Depay returns I would expect Torres to move to the right and Dembele to the left. Torres on the wings should dribble a lot more than when playing in a striker position. Another thing I would love to see Xavi use, as often used by Enrique in the Spanish NT, is Torres’ inverted runs. Torres would often start deep on the wings, and the invert into the half spaces, while a midfielder makes a run between the defenders thus creating lot’s of space in the box, something for the strikers to utilize or even allowing Torres to shoot. I couldn’t find a video so here’s a PowerPoint video I made on the same.
However, something else I would like to see is a 3–4–3 formation, with Memphis as the attacking midfielder in the midfield four, somewhat like the role Muller plays. However, if Memphis’s form continues to stagnate even after recovering, I think Memphis is in for some problems here. Whatever happens, he is sure to bring some goalscoring threat to a rather passive-in-front-of-goal team. In Ferran, we finally have a runner, who can dismantle defenses with his runs and hopefully score some goals.
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