Pau Torres on the Real Madrid move that nearly happened, and why he won’t take Emery’s old advice before Barcelona

Pau Torres has admitted he was one of Real Madrid’s final two or three candidates in 2021, but the Aston Villa centre-back has no interest in chasing the move Unai Emery once told him he was good enough for.

The 29-year-old spoke to Spanish newspaper Sport in an interview published on Monday, a day before Villa face Barcelona at the Spotify Camp Nou. The Catalan club host Emery’s side in the Champions League on Tuesday night, with kick-off at 8pm UK time.

It’s a fitting fixture for the conversation. Torres came through the youth system at Villarreal, spent seven years in their first team and caught the eye of both Spanish giants along the way. Neither move happened, and in 2023 he followed Emery to the West Midlands instead.

His contract runs until 2028, and back in March he said he wanted to stay at Villa for a long time. Nothing in this interview suggests that has changed.

How close did Pau Torres come to joining Real Madrid?

Closer than most people realised. Asked whether he was near a move to the Bernabeu in 2021, Torres didn’t dodge it.

He said: “Yes. In the end, being among the two or three candidates for a team like Madrid is always a very positive thing. I also understand why they decided at the end of the window on a free agent at that time, like David Alaba.”

That’s a remarkably calm way to describe losing out on Real Madrid. Alaba arrived on a free, Madrid saved a fee, and Torres stayed at Villarreal, where he had already won the Europa League under Emery in 2020/21 by beating Manchester United in the final.

And what about Barcelona?

The Barcelona links were real enough to make the papers, but Torres says he never let them into his head.

“Some rumours and such, but my agents and I have always discussed it. Unless something is very advanced, I don’t want to know anything about it,” he explained.

That attitude will be tested on Tuesday, when he walks out at the ground of a club that once had him on its radar.

Pau Torres career in numbers

Those are competitive senior first-team games in all competitions, internationals not included.

Why Emery matters so much

Torres played 105 matches under Emery at Villarreal, and a big share of his 119 Villa appearances have come under him too. Emery took the Villa job in November 2022, and last season he led them to the Europa League.

Asked what sits behind that success, Torres painted a picture of a manager who barely leaves the training ground.

“His success is no fluke; he has worked incredibly hard for it. You could say he lives at the training ground. He’s one of the first to arrive and always the last to leave,” he said.

“He’s obsessed with his work and with football, and that’s the passion he tries to instil in us. Both he and his staff prepare for matches down to the very last detail.”

The advice he’s choosing to ignore

Here’s the twist. When the pair were together at Villarreal, Emery told Torres that a player with his potential should be heading to Real Madrid or Barcelona. Torres says he isn’t thinking about that any more.

Instead, it was Emery’s pitch in 2023 that won him over. “When he left for Aston Villa, he was very honest with me and said, ‘Come here with me; we have a very good project’. I’ve been with him for a long time, and I hope we can have many more successes in the future, just like we have so far,” Torres said.

He even joked that he reminds his manager of their shared trophy count. “Yes, I sometimes tell Unai that we already have two Europa League titles and that we have to try to go for the big one, the Champions League trophy. It’s very difficult, and we know we’re not favourites by any means. But we can compete with anyone if we’re at our best,” he added.

Villa go to Spain with nine points from three games in the league phase, so the ambition isn’t coming from nowhere.

Verdict: Pau Torres is right to stay with Emery at Villa

For a long time, missing out on Madrid or Barcelona was treated as the end of a Spanish defender’s ambitions. Torres has turned that on its head. He’s won the Europa League twice with the same manager, he’s playing Champions League football, and he’s tied down until 2028.

There’s also something healthy about how little the “what ifs” seem to bother him. He speaks about Real Madrid with respect rather than regret, and he shuts out the Barcelona noise completely.

If Villa are serious about going deep in this competition while juggling a busy Premier League autumn, from the meeting with Manchester City to the visit of Fulham, they need their senior centre-backs to feel exactly like this. A big night at Barcelona is the perfect stage for Torres to show the Spanish public what they missed, and Villa fans will hope the man who once chose Emery over the Bernabeu keeps proving he made the right call.