Fernando Torres' decline after joining Chelsea in January 2011 was as sudden as it was shocking.
But the former Liverpool striker seems to have found a small part of his former self at hometown club Atletico Madrid on loan.
This season he has scored 10 La Liga goals - modest by his Anfield standard - but impressive in comparison to the years in between. Not just that, but the Spain World Cup winner is a likely starter against Real Madrid in the Champions League final in Milan, a place he struggled badly at while with AC.
On this week's Newstalk Team 33, our regular Spanish football contributor Eduardo Alvarez of ESPN and Radio Marca joined us to talk about the Atletico team that won the double in 1996, the fall and rise of the club and also his view on why Torres has recaptured a fraction of his former self.
"He's learned to pick his spots and maybe seven or eight years ago, he had plenty of energy to chase a long ball or to try to take on a defender and he would do that 15-20 times a game," he said.
"At this point he does it 4-5 times but he chooses them very carefully and he knows exactly when to pounce and probably that wasn't the case in the last 3-5 years and he was suffering because he wasn't in the shape that he was when he was a 23-year-old. So he would chase 15-20 long balls but when he got it, he wouldn't be in the form to take advantage. But now he has matured and he knows how to pick his battles."
Listen to the full interview on the podcast player and also on iTunes:
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