From self-doubt to Spanish football folklore: Ferran Torres’ journey to the top | OneFootball

The clock read 106 minutes when the ball finally finds Ferran Torres.

For most of the evening in New Jersey, Spain have pushed and probed against an Argentina side determined to drag the World Cup final towards penalties.

20 attempts have come and gone. Lionel Messi has been suffocated, Lamine Yamal subdued, and the biggest match in football has slowly tightened into a knot nobody seems capable of undoing.

Then, two of Spain’s substitutes change the narrative of the game. Nico Williams and Ferran combine. The Barcelona forward does what he does best and makes the perfect run into the box.

He takes the ball on the half-volley and puts his left foot through it with the perfect striker’s instinct. A split second later, the net bulges.

In an instant, Ferran is no longer simply a Barcelona forward, a useful squad player and a footballer who has spent years being discussed in terms of what he is not.

He is the man who has scored the goal that makes Spain champions of the world.

The man of the moment. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)

The goal took seconds. The journey towards it took him years.

Because long before Ferran stood at the summit of football, he already knew what it felt like to be somewhere close to the bottom.

When everything became too heavy

Ferran arrived at Barcelona from Manchester City in the winter of 2021, signing a contract until 2027 and stepping into a storied club who were going through a very difficult period.

Barcelona were rebuilding financially, institutionally and competitively. Ferran, still only 21, was expected to become part of the solution almost immediately.

There were good nights, goals, flashes of the intelligent runner Spain had already come to trust.

However, Barça have always been a difficult club to be at. A missed chance does not disappear when the final whistle blows; it gets blown out of proportion.

Another miss arrives and joins the first. And then another. Soon, a striker is no longer simply trying to score. He is trying to escape without becoming the subject of constant criticism yet again.

By February 2023, Ferran was speaking openly about what had happened to him.

After Barcelona’s Europa League elimination by Eintracht Frankfurt the previous season, he said he had fallen into what he described as a ‘bottomless pit’ and did not know how to get out.

His confidence had disappeared. Everything was affecting him. Eventually, he made the decision to work with a psychologist.

The road to the top has not been easy for Ferran. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)

Perhaps the most revealing part of his admission, though, was what football had become inside his own head.

Ferran explained that he had become too obsessed with scoring. The goal was no longer the consequence of playing well; it had become the measurement of whether he was worth anything at all.

His change began when he learned to enjoy playing again rather than treating every match as another referendum on himself.

Because it would be easy, after New Jersey, to turn Ferran’s story into something simplistic.

The footballer struggles, seeks help, scores a World Cup-winning goal, and everything is suddenly complete.

Mental health does not work like that. A goal does not cure anxiety. A trophy does not erase difficult years.

The World Cup was not Ferran’s victorious moment. It came much earlier, when he admitted that he was struggling.

The slow reconstruction

Football always notices the moment when the transformation becomes visible. Unfortunately, it does not care for the hundreds of days of work behind it.

For Ferran, there was no sudden reinvention. There were training sessions. Substitute appearances. Runs that were not found.

There were chances that were missed and chances that were taken. There were matches on the wing, matches through the centre, games in which he started and others in which his job was to wait.

Slowly, something changed. The obsession with being indispensable gave way to the value of being useful. The “Shark mentality” came forth and helped him rediscover his form and self-belief.

And then ‘The Shark’ came to life. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)

That became one of Ferran’s greatest strengths under Hansi Flick. By May 2025, he had scored 19 goals and supplied seven assists for Barcelona despite starting only 19 of his 45 appearances to that point.

His 26 direct goal contributions had come at a rate of one every 73 minutes. He was producing without demanding the team revolve around him. That was when another final came along.

Barcelona were losing 2-1 to Real Madrid in the 2025 Copa del Rey decider when Ferran equalised with six minutes remaining, dragging the match into extra time before Jules Kounde eventually won it in the 116th minute.

Ferran finished the competition as its six-goal top scorer and was named player of the match in the final.

The pattern was beginning to form. Not the pattern of a superstar demanding centre stage, but something subtler.

When the game became uncomfortable, Ferran stayed available. He was rarely the glamorous solution but always the practical one.

The following season brought further proof. Ferran scored 16 league goals as Barcelona won La Liga, sharing the Zarra Trophy with Lamine Yamal as the competition’s highest-scoring Spanish player.

He had done so without taking any penalties through the course of the season, unlike his younger counterpart.

It was the first time a Barcelona player had won the award while representing the club, and it was fitting that Ferran was among those to achieve that feat.

Ferran was made to wait

Even the 2026 World Cup was not smooth sailing for the Spaniard. It asked Ferran to prove something else: patience.

His only start came in the opening game against Cape Verde, where he had La Roja’s best chance but hit the cross bar from close range in the 0-0 draw.

He then found the back of the net against Saudi Arabia coming off the bench, only for the goal to be chalked off for a marginal offside.

As Ferran waited for VAR’s decision on whether or not the goal would stand, the cameras caught him saying to himself, “Please, let it be a goal. Please…”.

It offered a small glimpse into just how much Ferran wanted to get off the mark at the tournament. Then came his first note of contribution.

In the Round of 16 against Portugal, with the match poised and elimination looming for the team that blinked first, Ferran threaded the pass that allowed Mikel Merino to score the 91st-minute winner.

The Arsenal man hogged all the limelight, and rightly so, and Ferran’s contribution was lost in the background yet again.

Spain’s tournament did not belong to him. This is not the story of one player carrying a nation from the first game to the last.

That is precisely why the ending fits.

In the final, Ferran waits.

Perhaps an earlier version of him would have viewed the substitutes’ bench as a judgement. A statement about status.

However, the Ferran at MetLife Stadium is no longer about that. He waits for the minutes he is given. He tries to make the most of them. This time, he succeeds.

The moment Ferran etched his name into the history books. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

It is the sort of moment that football retrospectively makes look inevitable.

Of course it had to be him. Of course it was the player who had spent years learning that he could not control when chances came, only whether he was ready when they did.

Of course, it had to be the player who was seen talking to himself earlier in the tournament praying that a goal was given.

Afterwards, Ferran rejected the idea that the goal belonged only to him. He said:

However, history will be less democratic. The goal will belong to him. History will remember his name whenever it references Spain’s second star.

Ten minutes from Iniesta

There is one comparison that cannot be entirely avoided.

In 2010, another Barcelona player stepped into extra time in a World Cup final and altered Spanish football forever.

Andres Iniesta scored against the Netherlands in the 116th minute to deliver Spain’s first world title.

Sixteen years later, Ferran scored in the 106th to deliver the second.

The comparison is obvious, but the similarities should probably end there.

They are different players, from different teams, carrying different stories. Iniesta’s place in Spanish football was already immense before Johannesburg. Ferran’s was not.

The folklore will always reference the patterns, though.

Spain now have two World Cup-winning goals. Both were scored in extra time. Both were scored by Barcelona footballers.

Ten minutes apart on the clock. Sixteen years apart in history.

The noise sounds different now

A day after the final, Spain returned home.

Madrid was red and gold. The bus moved through streets filled with people. Eventually, the champions reached Cibeles, where Rodri took the microphone.

And then, amid all the celebrations, Spain’s captain, Rodri, stopped to speak about Ferran. He told the crowd:

Then came the chant. “Ferran… Ferran… Ferran…”

For years, the noise around Ferran Torres was something he had to learn to survive. Opinions about the transfer fee.

Opinions about missed chances. Opinions about whether he belonged at Barcelona. Whether he was good enough for Spain. Whether another forward should play instead.

At his lowest point, he allowed too much of that noise inside. So, he asked for help.

Slowly, he climbed. He took someone else’s hand to come out of the “bottomless pit”. Not in a straight line. Ferran’s career has never been in a straight line.

Until one night, in the 106th minute of a World Cup final, the ball came to him and all that remained was the simplest thing in football on paper. A finish. Ferran did just that.

Spain became world champions. The noise around Ferran returned.

Only this time, it was a country of 47 million people singing his name.