By Early Doors (original post on Yahoo Eurosport here)
Ever since he moved to Chelsea for £50 million, Fernando Torres seems to have lived a cursed life.
On the pitch, that is. Off the pitch he's a healthy young man with a beautiful wife, two lovely kids and an £8m-a-year salary. So let's not get too worried on his behalf.
Still, we're all defined to an extent by what we do - and on that score Torres hasn't had the happiest of times over the past few years.
Yet things have never been quite this bad. The Spaniard lined up for the Blues in a pre-season friendly against Slovenia's NK Olimpija Ljubljana this weekend - the sort of summer fixture that should be one of those fill-your-boots, boost-your-confidence sort of matches - and proceeded to fluff his lines by missing an open goal from two yards out, as you'll see above.
Then, just to make things worse, Chelsea's new striker Diego Costa rubbed a bit of salt in the wound by booming this effort into the top corner:
Costa had already taken the old Fernado Torres spot in the Spain squad (not that it made any difference to La Roja in the World Cup). And on this evidence, it looks like Costa will send Torres down the pecking order at Stamford Bridge as well.
In fact, Torres will probably have to content himself by earning that £8 million for tidying up the miniature cones after training and cutting up the oranges at half-time.
