Ferran Torres’ Childhood in Foios: A Homemade Goal, Dogs as Defenders, Valencia at Seven
Ferran Torres grew up in Foios with a homemade goal and dogs Lluna & Mini as defenders, then EPLA futsal and Valencia CF at seven. Panenka quotes + Mundo Deportivo photos.
FOIOS, Valencia — Before MetLife and a World Cup final, there was a downstairs room in a house in Foios. Ferran Torres set up a goal, kicked a ball at his dogs, and called that a good afternoon.
He told Guillem Balagué in Panenka that his street was wide enough for games outside, but he rarely left home. “Thanks to God, we lived in a house with a ground floor and I had my goal there, and my dogs, who acted as defenders.” One of them lived to steal the ball — and that, he said, helped.
He named them in the same interview; BBC Sport later listed the pair while he was still at Valencia: Lluna, a Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, and Mini, an Andalusian Podenco. “For my sister and me they are everything. We couldn’t live without a dog,” he said in Panenka. Older sister Arantxa remains his closest confidante off the pitch.
EPLA futsal, then the Valencia trial
Before the academy came a single year of school futsal at EPLA (Escuelas Profesionales Luis Amigó). “It was only a year, but you learn a lot because it’s different from seven-a-side or eleven-a-side,” Torres said. Mundo Deportivo credits an EPLA teacher in Godella with spotting him and pointing him toward Valencia’s trials.
He was seven, in the pre-benjamin age group. One school match, a trial invite, a recruitment scrimmage — and they kept him. His mother bought his first boots at Base Sport in Torrent. He wore studs to class: “I started a fashion.”
The memory he keeps returning to is the first Valencia shirt. He went into the bathroom in just the jersey and underpants and stared at the crest. “What am I doing here?” — a line that runs through both Panenka and BBC. “A unique moment.”
Foios as the escape valve
Foios, he told Panenka, is “a tiny village in Valencia, in the northern orchards.” He grew up there, still has all his friends there, and finds it welcoming. Diez Minutos, citing the same interview, calls it his válvula de escape — the place for trusted people and a clean break from club noise.
BBC added quieter detail: near his City move he had still been living with his father in Foios; he remembered helping his grandfather in the orchard — “small details” that shaped the person, not only the winger. Four lifelong friends still tell him when he plays badly.
From there the official path is straight: EPLA futsal → Valencia from age seven → a 2017 La Liga debut as the first player born in the 2000s, per Barcelona’s club bio. Foios never drops out of the story. When Torres talks about home, it is not a palace — it is a downstairs goal, two dogs, and a village in Valencia’s northern huerta.
Sources: Panenka interview with Guillem Balagué; BBC Sport (Balagué, Aug 2020); Mundo Deportivo “Viaje a la infancia de Ferran Torres” (5 Jan 2022) + photo gallery; FC Barcelona player bio; Diez Minutos (Panenka quotes on Foios). Photos: Mundo Deportivo (childhood); Wikimedia Commons / Valencia CF CC BY 3.0 (2019).
