Beware the Shark! Ferran Torres can fill Robert Lewandowski's boots and keep Barcelona's treble chase on track

"Football is brutal," Ferran told El Mundo Deportivo earlier this year, "especially when you break into the elite at a young age, and even more so at a club like Barca."

He obviously knows this from personal experience. Torres had already proven himself one of the most promising young players in world football, at both Valencia and Manchester City, when he arrived at Camp Nou in January 2022. But he was still only 21 at the time.

What's more, he had been signed for €55 million (£47m/$62.5m) - a colossal sum of money for the cash-strapped Catalans. The pressure on him to justify such a significant outlay was, thus, enormous, and it proved too heavy a weight for him to carry for an awfully long time.

Ferran scored seven times in his first 26 appearances for Barca, but he was clearly struggling to play with any great consistency or confidence. "I fell into a bottomless well," he later admitted, "and I did not know how to get out."

Luckily, he sought help, and began seeing a psychologist after picking up a minor foot injury ahead of the 2022-23 season that hindered his attempts to lock down a regular starting spot in Xavi's Barcelona side. "It was a very tough experience but, at the same time, also one of the best," he explained.

Another turning point arrived when he befriended UFC fighter Ilias Topuria, who taught Ferran the importance of positivity and perseverance.

"I connected with him from the very beginning," the versatile attacker told El Mundo Deportivo of his trip to Florida to watch his compatriot in action in June 2023. Before the fight, he told me: 'This guy's not going to make it through the first round.' That's when I thought, 'Wow! I want to be like him.' I went there as one Ferran and came back as another."

Topuria was also indirectly responsible for Torres earning himself a new nickname that same summer: "It came from the fact that I mentioned during a lunch with the Spanish national team that Ilias had said in an interview that he was the shark [in his division], meaning he didn't have to fight any fish for food," Torres said on The Wild Project podcast. "My team-mates started using shark emojis with me on Instagram and it just snowballed from there."

The 'Shark mentality', as Torres called it, is essentially a state of mind, the idea that an apex predator need not fear anyone or anything.

“It basically means never giving up, always pushing forward, never being afraid," Torres told Mundo Deportivo in March of this year. "Failure is part of football - it’s a game of mistakes. The ones who fail are the ones who are trying."

Ferran's renewed drive and determination almost immediately saved his Barca career. There was constant speculation during the summer of 2023 that Barca were willing to sell the versatile winger to raise funds to strengthen their squad elsewhere. However, he had absolutely no intention of leaving, and even joked about turning off his phone in order to avoid having to discuss a possible transfer to another club.

Instead, he focused on getting himself in the best possible physical condition to prove his worth to Barca, which meant doing what he calls "the invisible work" - all of the hard graft done behind the scenes, in the gym and out on the road, that the fans don't see.

"I talked to my physical trainer about doing double sessions every day," he revealed. "I told my nutritionist I wanted to lose three kilos, and my physio that I wanted to do two hours of treatment. It was non-negotiable. What keeps you at the elite level is discipline and perseverance; motivation only lasts for days and doesn't carry you to the big goal."

As 'big goals' go, Ferran's was rather ambitious: breaking into the Barca team. However, progress was unquestionably made last season, as Torres scored 11 times in 42 appearances. He would have racked up even more goals, too, had it not been for a hamstring problem that ruled him out of action for nearly two months. The timing was cruel, too, as the injury arrived just over a week after he'd hit a hat-trick against Real Betis.

The disappointing end to his 2023-24 campaign led to further speculation over his future, but Ferran remained defiant. "It's not that I want to continue at Barca," he clarified in an interview with RAC1 last summer, "it's that I'm going to continue at Barca!"

Happily for Ferran, his admirable perseverance is now paying off. He very much remains Barca's fourth-choice forward, behind Lewandowski, Raphinha and Lamine Yamal, but he's nonetheless playing a pivotal role in their treble tilt.

Indeed, Torres has hit 17 goals in all competitions, meaning this is already the most prolific campaign of his career so far. What makes that tally really impressive, though, is the fact that Ferran has started only 15 games this season. Consequently, he actually has a better strike-rate than pretty much every top forward in Europe bar Ousmane Dembele (who's playing in Ligue 1), as he's presently averaging a goal every 90.4 minutes.

Hardly surprising, then, that Flick holds Ferran in the highest esteem, holding up as an example for others to follow: "Whenever the team is in a difficult situation, Ferran reacts very well," the Barca boss told reporters in December, after the No.7 had come off the bench to net twice in the 3-2 win at Borussia Dortmund. "He has a very positive mentality.

"We've worked a lot with him, we’ve seen what we needed to work on and, no matter whether he starts or not, he's a very important player."

Ferran has certainly been pivotal to Barca's run to the final of the Copa del Rey. He was on target in the 5-1 rout of Betis in the last 16, hit a hat-trick against former club Valencia in the quarters and, most crucially of all, scored the only goal of the decisive second-leg win over Atletico Madrid in the semis. The objective now is to prove that he can be the ideal replacement for Lewandowski - and not just on Saturday.

"Obviously, there is a centre-forward ahead of me who, to me, is one of the best in football history," he told Mundo Deportivo. "I'm learning from him and getting more comfortable in a position I hadn't played much before. But I've always said I have a lot of confidence in myself, and I believe I could be Barca's starting striker."

On the face of it, it looks like a tall order. Lewandowski is still scoring freely and expected to spend at least one more season at Barca, who are reportedly scouring the transfer market looking for a worthy heir to the prolific Pole.

Ferran, though, really shouldn't be underestimated. Not anymore, at least. He's fought incredibly hard to force his way back into the first-team picture at Barca, and the word is that the club are considering renewing his contract, which would be just reward for a player who appeared destined to go down as one of the Blaugrana's biggest transfer flops less than two years ago.

“If I met the Ferran from back then," he said last month, "I would slap him in the face and tell him to wake up! I know what it’s like to hit rock bottom and I don't want to end up there again."

There appears little chance of that anymore. Torres is not just a different player now, he's a different person. The new Ferran is no longer afraid of failure. And that's precisely why 'The Shark' has every chance of success.