Fernando Torres has lavished praise on Liverpool attacker Diogo Jota.
Jota scored in front of Torres on Wednesday night by finding the net in the Champions League win over Atletico Madrid.
The legendary Spaniard, a former player of Liverpool and Atleti, was in attendance to watch the game in person.
Torres has briefly been a teammate of the Portugal international after he joined Atletico as a teenager in 2016.
And the now-retired hitman has noted that Jota has got so much better since those days.
He said to LFC TV: “Diogo Jota was really young when he came to Atletico. We shared a pre-season together and it’s really nice to see how he is improving and being a really important player, starting for Liverpool many times and scoring goals.”
Improvement
Well, the word ‘improvement’ is probably an understatement.
This is a player who made Liverpool fork out £45 million for his services in the summer of 2020.
He had impressed in the Premier League at Wolves but clearly Jurgen Klopp and Michael Edwards were confident he could do the business at Anfield – and he has been.
Since arriving, Jota has netted 18 goals in 48 games for Liverpool across all competitions.
Bear in mind that a chunk of those games will have been as a substitute, so it isn’t a fair reflection of his impact.
No longer is he the raw talent that Torres saw in pre-season, but a very important part of one of Europe’s best squads.
And that is massive progress by anyone’s standards.
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