MOR THE MERRIER
Smiling new dad Alvaro sets a twin target.. to grab goals for Chelsea and be a great father
HE has become a father to twins but Chelsea striker Alvaro Morata has only three things on his mind this season – “score, score, score”.
After a tough first campaign at Chelsea with a club record £58million price tag around his neck, Morata was expected to take the easy option by returning to Italy or Spain.
This weekend he is back at Wembley for the Community Shield where he missed a penalty against Arsenal last summer.
The difference? The unflinching support of his wife Alice, who he describes as his ‘Lioness’, and the birth of their sons Alessandro and Leonardo last weekend.
“Leonardo is the calm one and Alessandro is a little bit crazy!” he said as he flicked through pictures on his phone. “But it’s incredible, you can see the character already after a few days and you can tell the difference.
“Now I’m ready. A lot of things have changed in our lives, the only thing I have in my head now is to score, score, score! Then to come back home and stay with my babies and my wife.
“The easiest thing would have been to leave Chelsea this year. I could have gone back to Italy. My wife is Italian.
“I could have gone back to Spain, I had a lot of offers. More money. But I want to fight. I want to change the past. I’d have had low pressure because I’d already played in Italy and Spain and done good things. But I decided to stay here. I wanted to.”
Morata has now changed his shirt from No.9 to No.29 to mark the date his twins were born. He added: “My first number is the one I chose to show when I started my professional career at Real Madrid. But now I have my two babies on my shirt and they give me a lot of power for the year.”
Some fans criticised the Spaniard on Twitter for missing a penalty against Arsenal (below) on Wednesday - unaware that he had spent the previous three nights sleeping in hospital with Alice and his boys. “I needed to be there with my wife,” he added. “But I ended up with pain in my back as the bed was too small.” Morata (below, with Mirror Sport’s Darren Lewis) began his Blues career with eight goals in 10 games last season to suggest he was a sound investment as Diego Costa’s successor. After Christmas, however, he netted just three times. As he looked back on
‘The easiest thing would have been to leave Chelsea and go back to Italy. I had a lot of offers’
that barren period, Morata said: “I had a block in my head. I didn’t want to speak with anyone. I didn’t want to listen to anyone.
“I only wanted to stay at home. Probably it’s not depression but it’s similar. In football it’s all about the head and in the last year I suffered in this aspect because I came here with a lot of expectation, a lot of pressure. “I began well but after I had these things I got a pain in the back. I don’t know why. I did a lot of things to try to recover but I couldn’t and I didn’t know why. It was hurting in my head.”
A tough season was capped by a late-night phone call from then-Spain boss Julen Lopetegui to drop him from their World Cup squad. “I don’t mind admitting there were a few tears,” he said. “The manager called me at midnight and told me, ‘You are not in my plans’. I am 25-years-old. The World Cup was everything for me.”
Now Morata is hoping the Maurizio Sarri stardust will help. In his three years in charge, Napoli scored 251 league goals – more than any other side in the Italian top flight. Morata said: “When Sarri was announced as manager my father said to me, ‘All the strikers with Sarri score a lot of goals so don’t worry. This will be your year’.
“Now it’s time to be an important player. To score a lot to goals, to help the team to get trophies and to give back all the things
that Chelsea put on me.”