Ferran Torres and When One Goal Changes Everything | OneFootball

Football is a fickle sport. Less and less in the social media era can formerly great players stake their claim in modern football off of their legendary status alone and now have to prove themselves week-upon-week consistently. Look at Mohamed Salah, for instance. 12 months ago, after arguably his best-ever season, which saw him as the favourite for the Ballon d’Or up until March and eventually had him finish fourth in the race, you’d do well to find a club that wouldn’t take him into their ranks.

Now, however, just one disappointing season that still saw him put up 14 goal contributions in 27 matches in the world’s hardest league at the age of 33, his stock has completely fallen. Not only would no team in Europe’s top five leagues take him, but he would end up signing for a club in Turkiye that isn’t Galatasaray, Fenerbahce, or even Besiktas. Salah would join Trabzonspor, where even their most hardcore of fans have to admit how far of a step back it is from the likes of Barcelona, where he was linked a year ago.

However, the fickleness of the sport doesn’t always have to go against you. Sometimes the “what have you done for me lately” mentality of football in the modern era can go in a player’s favour, bringing them praise, plaudits, and publicity that they may not quite deserve. A story just like that is the one that I’m going to be sharing with you today. The story of a player whose unremarkable averageness turned into global fame after the scoring of one goal, and how it may come back to bite him in the future.

The Rise of Ferran Torres

Ferran Torres, for most of his career, has been the textbook “good, not great” type of player. At some points, you couldn’t even give him the “good” part of the saying. Signed for Manchester City in 2020 for 35 million euros, and at the time, 20-year-old Ferran was supposed to be one for the future. An attacking option for Pep to nurture and grow as Sergio Aguero’s time at the club wound to an end. While Ferran would score a decent 13 as a backup in his first season for City and even net a hat-trick against Newcastle, by halfway through the following season, injuries had derailed his time at the club. This prompted a shock 55m bid from financially dire Barcelona in December 2021.

In his first two and a half years at Barcelona, Ferran would net just 25 and assist 12 for the club, even undergoing a stretch in all competitions where he would score just two in 35 matches. While Torres had his moments in those years, such as scoring a hat trick against Betis and scoring and assisting against Real Madrid in a 4-0 win, most of his matches would leave much to be desired. After his first full season, it got so bad for Torres that Barcelona brought in former Atlético Madrid golden boy Joao Felix, who plays the same two positions as Torres, on loan, to give the Spaniard a reason not to be complacent.

Since Hansi Flick’s introduction to the Barcelona dugout in 2024, things have got better for Ferran. Becoming a pure striker, rotating with Robert Lewandowski, Torres scored 40 in all competitions across the two seasons, finishing as Barcelona’s third-top scorer in 2025 behind Lewandowski and Raphinha, and joint second-top scorer in 2026 with Raphinha, behind Lamine Yamal. While he wouldn’t live up to the levels of those players in any other categories besides goal output, it still went to show that Ferran had still grown as a player.

In his four-and-a-half years at Barcelona, despite his ups and downs, Torres was still viewed as a cult hero of sorts at the club, a player who had his flaws but still endeared himself to Culers because he always tried his best and felt like a kind of adopted son to Barcelona fans. Brought in during turbulent times, lending a helping hand in getting Barcelona back to the top, building great connections with his teammates, and being one of the stalwarts of the rebuild. He truly felt like one of Barcelona’s own. His output proved that there was a great player somewhere inside Ferran; he just needed to sort out his flaws.

Ferran’s Moment

Going into the 2026 World Cup, Torres expected some late-match opportunities off the bench, as he started behind Mikel Oyarzabal for Spain at striker. Ferran’s only start in the tournament would be in Spain’s first match, in a heavily rotated side which drew 0-0 to Cape Verde. Torres would play the rest of the tournament as a backup, and while he would have his moments, such as assisting Mikel Merino’s winner against Portugal, his tournament would largely consist of missed chances and disallowed goals. The real moment of truth for Ferran would come in the final itself, against Argentina.

Coming on in the 62nd minute for a tired Oyarzabal, Ferran nearly scored off a header from a corner in regulation, but otherwise would have his trademark performance of nothing until the second half of extra time. Within a minute of the beginning of the period, Pedro Porro would play in a cross to Nico Williams, who headed it into the path of Ferran Torres. The Spaniard would blast the ball with all he could, smashing it into the top of the net.

Andreas Brehme. Andrés Iniesta. Mario Götze. And now Ferran Torres. Whatever else happens in his career, Torres has joined one of football’s most exclusive groups: players who have scored the winning goal in a World Cup final.

Ferran Torres’ turnaround from begging to have his goal allowed by VAR while already 4-0 up against Saudi Arabia in the group stage to scoring the final winner is a great, almost storybook redemption arc. As a Barca fan who had watched Ferran miss quite literally hundreds of chances in my over 200 times watching him, I cheered as loudly as anyone to see Barcelona’s man go down in history. Ferran Torres, a player who Barca fans had been cheering on for so long, had finally gone down in history.

Ferran: The Superstar

However, once you have your fairytale moment, it’s incredibly easy to turn it sour. After a brief vacation after the World Cup, Ferran Torres came back to America last week and was treated like a superstar. He would be a guest at Baltimore Ravens practice, throw the first pitch at a Yankees game, go on an American media tour with Under Armour, go on CNN, NBC, TODAY, Vogue, and get treated as if Cristiano Ronaldo himself came to the United States.

Besides the obvious winner, Ferran Torres had a below-average World Cup. One could argue that of the 26 members of Spain’s squad, Ferran was actually in the bottom half in terms of performance. Stars like Golden Ball winner Rodri, Golden Glove winner Unai Simón, Best Young Player winner Pau Cubarsi, first-choice striker Mikel Oyarzabal, as well as Aymeric Laporte, Marc Cucurella, Fabian Ruiz, Dani Olmo, and Pedro Porro all had much better tournaments than Ferran. Even players who delivered below their expected standards like Lamine Yamal and Pedri could be argued to have had better tournaments than Torres.

In the final itself, Pau Cubarsi was one of the standouts. He completed 121 of 126 attempted passes, made seven clearances, and kept a clean sheet among other impressive statistics, all at 19 on the World’s biggest stage. But it’s Ferran who gets the fanfare and tours. The reason why is obvious, but it speaks to people’s obsession with the moment. No matter how the rest of the tournament went, the player who provided “The Moment” will be the one remembered.

And it’s gotten worse in modern times. In 2014, just 12 years ago, while Gotze was the one who provided the winner in the big moment, most fans don’t think of him when they think of that German side. They think of Manuel Neuer’s heroics; they think of Thomas Müller, Miroslav Klose, or Toni Kroos. When people look back on this Spain side in the coming years, will they think of Rodri? Yamal? Oyarzabal? Cubarsi? Simon? Or will they think of the backup striker who started just one match?

Ferran Torres would then go on to further sour his big moment by using his newfound platform to pressure Barcelona. The club who were always there, supporting him and still playing him through scoring twice in 35 matches, gets thrown under the bus the day he becomes big-time. “They have to show me that they love me”, said Ferran in an exclusive interview with NBC on a potential extension with Barcelona amid interest from PSG. Ferran also said that he has “a dream club”, but wouldn’t say who it was, hinting that it wasn’t Barcelona.

The Future of Ferran Torres

Since that interview, speculation has turned into reality. On August 15, Paris Saint-Germain announced the signing of Ferran Torres from Barcelona in a deal reportedly worth around €50 million. Torres has signed a five-year contract and will wear the No. 9 shirt in Paris.

If you asked Barcelona fans, the bitterness of his departure comes more from how Ferran is leaving rather than just the fact that he’s leaving. Some knew that the Spaniard could end up going out the door with Lewandowski this summer, but few thought that he would betray the club like this.

Some of the anger comes from where he’s going – PSG. A club that has poached countless Barcelona players over the years, notably Lionel Messi, Neymar, and Ousmane Dembele. PSG even poached Barcelona golden boy Dro Fernandez this past January for just 8 million. Countless times over the past decade, PSG have stolen some of Barcelona’s best players from under their noses, and it’s a trend that Culers are getting upset about.

Ferran’s journey is following a stereotypical arc seen many times in movies; a character grows and develops anonymously for a long time, supported by his close circle, finally makes the big time, and forgets about the people who brought them there. It rarely goes well for those types of characters, and you may be able to predict the same for Ferran.

However, life isn’t a movie, and Ferran doesn’t have to follow this script. Look at Torres’ former Barcelona teammate with whom he will reunite at PSG, Ousmane Dembele. In six years at Barcelona, Dembele had to fight and grow through incessant injuries, locker room and boardroom chaos, and constantly changing surroundings. After finally finding some steady growth in his last two seasons at the club, he too moved to PSG, where he had a stable environment to reach his true potential under Luis Enrique, and in two seasons did the unthinkable – won the Ballon D’Or.

While Ferran’s choice of being Dembele’s backup striker at PSG seems curious, seeing as a lack of playing time was one of his reasons cited for wanting to leave Barcelona, only time will tell if we see the same old Ferran Torres we’re used to, or if he can become the superstar he’s acting like.