Ferran Torres scored a hat-trick in 26 minutes on his first start for Paris Saint-Germain. Asked afterwards to mark his time in Paris out of ten, he gave himself a seven.
Wednesday night at the Parc des Princes was the sort of evening that invites exaggeration. Paris opened the defence of their Champions League crown by putting six past Slovan Bratislava, and the summer signing from Barcelona was the reason the scoreboard got away from the Slovak champions so quickly. Our report on the 6-1 win has the detail: a near-post volley, a curled finish, a half-volley from a corner, three goals inside less than half an hour. It was, per Get French Football News, his first start for the club.
What Ferran Torres actually said
Speaking in a post-match mixed zone attended by Get French Football News, Torres was asked to rate his start to life in Paris. He did not reach for the obvious answer.
“I am someone with high expectations [of myself], so I would say a ‘7’,” he said. “What is important is that I need to improve physically and technically. A perfect start? Almost perfect because we haven’t had the results that we have wanted, but it is a good sign that I am integrating, that I am trying to have an immediate impact, which is important as we have a lot of games with little rest.”
Three things are worth pulling out of that. He marked himself down rather than up on the night of a hat-trick. He named his own physical condition as the thing to fix. And he tied his personal verdict to the team’s results, which is not a courtesy every new signing extends.
He is right about the results
The self-deduction is defensible. Torres has scored five times for Paris already, having come off the bench at half-time on his Ligue 1 debut and struck twice as PSG recovered from two goals down at Stade Rennais, again per GFFN — a game that finished 2-2. He has not added to that league tally since.
Nor have the results arrived around him. Paris are winless in Ligue 1 after three matches: 2-2 at Rennes, 2-2 at Lille, and a 2-1 defeat by Monaco. Monaco top the table and Les Parisiens are already seven points adrift. The season’s only other victory came in the UEFA Super Cup, 2-1 against Aston Villa, with the Trophée des Champions lost 1-0 to Lens. Six goals against Slovan Bratislava does not undo any of that, and Torres appears to know it.
The integration line is the interesting one
“A good sign that I am integrating” is the phrase that should encourage Luis Enrique most, because the evidence backs it. Ousmane Dembele set up two of the three goals, the pair swapping between the middle and the left until Slovan stopped trying to follow them. The second came after a Maghnes Akliouche dribble — the summer arrival from Monaco’s first assist in a PSG shirt, and he is still waiting on a first goal. For a forward line that has spent two seasons being drilled into shape, absorbing a new front-line option this fast is not a small thing.
It is also why the squad’s internal competition has shifted. Torres cost a reported €48.5m from Barcelona, wears the number nine, and is now applying serious pressure to the established front three rather than waiting behind it. GFFN note that he scored the winning goal in this summer’s World Cup final, so the temperament was never really the question.
Seven out of ten, with room above it
The neat thing about a self-awarded seven is what it implies about the other three marks. Torres has told the dressing room, in public, that he considers himself short of his own ceiling while scoring at better than a goal a game. The fixture list — “a lot of games with little rest”, as he put it — will test whether the physical work he says he needs can actually be done mid-season.
If you want the fuller background on the man now leading the Paris attack, our profile of who Ferran Torres is covers the route from Valencia and Manchester City to the Parc. On this evidence, he has settled quicker than anyone at the club had any right to expect — and is still marking himself down for it.
