Reds in rapture over irrepressible Torres

Midfielder Yossi Benayoun led a flood of tributes to match-winner Fernando Torres as Liverpool FC celebrated their safe passage into the last eight of the UEFA Champions League, following a 1-0 second-leg success at FC Internazionale Milano.

Vital contribution
The Spanish international scored his eighth goal in his last five games - and his 26th in all competitions this season – with a shot on the turn from the edge of the area which gave his side a 3-0 aggregate victory against an Inter side reduced to ten men following the sending off of Nicolás Burdisso. Liverpool are now just two ties away from a second successive UEFA Champions League final appearance and Benayoun, who like Torres joined in the summer, paid full homage to the 23-year-old's vital contribution.

'Big player'
"Torres has not just been good recently but he's been doing it all season," the Israel midfielder told uefa.com. "It's just great to have such a big player on your side because in every game when we're struggling to score, he comes up with the goals. In the Champions League you need class and he showed it again. He had one or two chances and he took his second one perfectly and so it's great to play with such a big player."

'Especially pleased'
Liverpool coach Rafael Benítez was equally complimentary about a player for whom he paid Club Atlético de Madrid a club record €30m last July. "I'm really pleased with [Pepe] Reina, [Javier] Mascherano, [Fernando] Torres – a lot of players that we have signed," said Benítez. "But this year I'm especially pleased with Torres, because we spent more money than ever before on him and now he is paying us back hugely. We knew that he could be OK, but we thought it would take him more time to settle down in the Premier League and in a new team, because it's not easy, but we are really pleased with him."

'Great atmosphere'
Ryan Babel, whom Benayoun replaced three minutes before Torres' 64th-minute goal, added that the atmosphere at a packed San Siro helped spur the players on. "You know when you play at the San Siro for a place in the quarter-finals it will be full," he said. "But both sets of supporters made a lot of noise – it was a great atmosphere. We knew they would come at us and put us under pressure and they did that from the first minute. They put us under quite a lot of pressure.

'Easier second half'
"But our main priority was not to concede a goal and we managed that in the first half. In the second half they had a player sent off and it became a lot easier for us after that. At that point we knew we were almost there, we knew it would be hard for them to score with ten men and we knew we could defend well. Then when Torres scored for us, we knew that was it."