Back in the day when Fernando Torres was striking goals against Manchester United and Rio Ferdinand for Liverpool, Rio had a tough time alongside his team mate Vidic as the two center backs struggled to keep up with the young Spaniard”s style of play
“Trust me. Listen, strikers were playing out on the wings sometimes because they didn”t want to come up against us, it was mad!
“There’s always going to be that one player in your career who’s difficult. He might not be the best player on the planet, but his style is made to hurt your style. And Torres might have just been that for Nemanja.
“He’s someone he found difficult to play against. And he”s probably the only player I”ve seen consistently give Vida a hard time, and he got sent off in a couple of the games didn”t he, early on in the games.
“But listen, Torres was a great player and when he was in his pomp when he was at Liverpool, he was one of the best strikers about. He was a devastating striker. But with me one-v-one, he didn”t cause me any problems if I”m honest.”
“One of my hardest strikers to play against when people ask me — other than the ones that are obvious, like [Cristiano] Ronaldo and [Lionel] Messi — was Kevin Davies. You would never expect that.
“But he was always tough to play against for me, always caused me the most problems. He always was physical, just obstructing you all the time. The ball might be over there [away from you] but he’s grabbing you and all this stuff.
“So you would never expect that, but Torres would have been that for Nemanja probably. But we never really spoke about it.”