The top Spanish assistant plays in Cyprus

Neither Santi Cazorla nor Angeliño nor Marcos Llorente. The Spanish footballer who has given the most assists this season is Manuel towers (La Algaba, 1991), which has 12 with the AEL Limassol in Cyprus. In 2019 he broke his ankle. He was out for seven months in which he learned to value every second on the pitch. He turned a problem into an opportunity and, since his return, there is no one to stop him. “Nobody expected that he could play at this level after the injury,” admits a footballer who was “mentally blocked” before landing on Cypriot soil. “Here I have rediscovered myself. Limassol is spectacular. I have everything I need to be happy and perform on the field“, discover.

Manu Torres is one of the pillars that support AEL Limassol, which dreams of conquering the Cypriot First Division for the first time in the last 10 years. “Why not? I think we can do it,” says the Spaniard before starting the decisive phase of the season. With 10 games still ahead, AEL is second, just one point behind Omonia, who leads the championship. “The Cypriot league is growing every year. It is very competitive and the proof is that APOEL, which has always been at the top, this year has not been even among the top six,” Torres discovers about a championship he has only been a few days he joined Michel Salgado as sports director of Pafos: “It is proof that good professionals do not stop arriving”.

Manu torres has already spent a third of his life abroad. The Andalusian, who turned 30 last January, packed his bags in 2011 to sign with the Schalke 04 affiliate, where he spent two years growing up “both in football and personally”. The first team of the miners, which at that time had soccer players of the stature of Raul Gonzalez, José Manuel Jurado, Christoph Metzelder or Jefferson Farfán, had just reached the semifinals of the Champions League, something that was crucial in Torres' decision: “There were world-class players, including a Spanish football legend like Raúl, and not I thought twice. It was a very big club. ” Manu Torres fondly remembers his time in Gelsenkirchen, but it was not there that he experienced his best moments in German football.

After ending his contract with Schalke 04, the Andalusian signed with him Karlsruher SC, where he met the two faces of football. First the friendly one, since in 2015 he was close to being promoted to the Bundesliga and causing Hamburg's first relegation in its history. The KSC finished third in the 2. Bundesliga and played the play-out against the team led by Rafael van der Vaart. And everything was going smoothly until Marcelo Díaz, with a goal from a direct free kick in the 90th minute, equalized the tie. “That killed us and we fell into extra time,” recalls Torres, who will not forget having played in front of 80,000 people in Hamburg. The bitter face he lived after the relegation of the team in 2017, which caused his departure to Greuther Fürth. “There I didn't feel good about myself,” recalls a Manuel Torres for whom changing Germany for Cyprus was “the best decision I have made in my life”. In Limassol he is happy and that is reflected every weekend in the field.