Manuel Briñas is 84, wears dark spectacles and has a thin white moustache to go with his hair. He lives in the residency of a Catholic school in the north of Madrid, walks with the help of a crutch hooked over one arm and spends every other weekend at the Vicente Calderón, standing alone watching Atlético play from among the photographers, technicians and stewards behind the advertising boards. At the end of each game he heads quietly out through the tunnel that leads to the cark park under the north stand where the media wait for the players, cameras ready and microphones in hand.

This Saturday, they waited for him. Like the immense majority of those who do the job he does, as important as they are anonymous, Briñas normally goes unnoticed but this time was different. He had started his slow walk along the edge of the pitch but someone there was looking for him, which meant that soon everyone was looking at him. “I was heading home when I felt a tap on the shoulder,” he explained, voice breaking. “I turned and it was Fernando [Torres]. He whispered in my ear: ‘This is for you, you made me love these colours. I’ll be grateful to you for the rest of my life.’”

At the end of their 3-1 win over Eibar, Torres’s team-mates had applauded the fans and gone down the players’ tunnel on the west side of the stadium where the Manzanares and the motorway pass, but Torres had headed north instead, towards Briñas. “I was looking for him, making sure he didn’t leave; luckily he didn’t escape,” he said. When he got there, behind the goal, beyond the hoardings, watched by the fans, he embraced Briñas, pulled off his shirt and handed it to him. “No one would feel prouder to have it than him,” Torres explained. “He’s responsible for me being here; he’s the one who said I could do it.”

Torres first met Briñas two decades ago. He was 10 and, accompanied by his dad and his brother Isra, he had turned up – two hours early – for a trial with 200 other kids on the gravel pitches of the Parque de las Cruces in Carabanchel, Atlético territory. It was not long after Jesús Gil had disbanded the youth system, losing Raúl as a result, and now Briñas was trying to rebuild it from scratch. They played 11-a-side games split into 20-minute halves while the coaches gave marks out of 10. “Give him 10,” Briñas said when he saw Torres. “In fact, give him 10 and a bit.”

Fernando Torres raises a shirt to mark his 100th goal. Photograph: Javier Lizon/EPA

The lad with the blond mop and the freckles – Briñas’s words – was the best among 40 kids who were invited back for a second trial at the Madrid football federation’s Cotorruelo pitches on the Vía Lusitana nearby and joined Atlético soon after, aged 11. “I wanted to play for the first team, maybe even to score a goal for them,” Torres said this weekend. The shirt he had just handed Briñas was the one he had been wearing when he scored his 100th.

It has taken a while. Nearly 15 years have passed between the two goals. Torres’s first came against Albacete in June 2001, when he was 17, just a kid, and Atlético Madrid were down in the Second Division for the first time since 1934, living perhaps the worst moment in their history. His latest comes as he approaches his 32nd birthday, when he’s just called The Kid and Atlético are probably living their best moment. When he scored his first, Jean-Francois Hernández was among his team-mates; when he scored his 100th, Jean-Francois’s son Lucas was.

Trailing 1-0, Atlético had turned the game around with two headers from corners – the first of them from such close range that it wasn’t just the ball that ended up in the net, goalscorer José María Giménez did too – before Torres’s moment arrived in the 90th minute. He stretched to nudge in Luciano Vietto’s cross, sealing Atlético’s first win in four and Diego Simeone’s 100th victory since joining the club – a total the Argentinian coach has reached quicker than anyone in La Liga history except Miguel Muñoz and Pep Guardiola.

But this was not about the win, or not only; that was not why the Calderón erupted or why, over on the bench, so did Simeone, looking to the sky waving his arms like a prayer had been answered, some religious revelation. “It was emotional,” Simeone said. “I want say an enormous congratulations to him.”

Behind him, the kit man Dimcho was scrabbling around, looking for something. He passed it to Simeone, who gave it to Yannick Carrasco, who called to Giménez, who ran over to get it then ran back and gave it to Torres. An Atlético shirt with “100” on the back. Torres unfolded it and showed it to the supporters, who stood to applaud. Then he threw it towards fans at the south end of the ground … and missed. A security guard collected it from the space in front of the stand and chucked it back in.

The shirt had been made some time ago. It has taken a while, alright. Torres had been stuck on 99 goals for 20 matches; his 99th had come against Eibar and now so too had his 100th – an entire round of games later. Atlético had faced every team in the league without Torres adding to the tally. There was joy on Saturday but there was relief too. As if justice had finally been done, as if he had been liberated. As if they all had. They were delighted he could celebrate his 100th goal and even more delighted at the way he did, so like Torres: one of them, aware of where he is and where he came from.

It is hard to do justice to just how much of an idol Torres is at the Calderón, where Liverpool shirts were worn after his departure and the goal that won Spain’s first international tournament in 44 years was considered theirs, not least because he celebrated it, and the World Cup, by draping himself in an Atlético flag. They love The Kid who always supported them and who, the way they see it, dragged them out of the Second Division, who left to conquer the world but never forgot them and fulfilled his promise to return. But it had started to feel like he really could be stuck on 99 forever, like some eternally frustrated batsman. The possibility was too cruel to contemplate, but it was real.

Atlético’s transfer ban and this winter’s window had drawn attention to the unexpected precariousness of his future at the Calderón. Torres is owned by Milan, officially on loan at Atlético. His contract is up at the end of the season, at which point the assumption was that he, then a free agent, would join Atlético for the rest of his career – albeit on a much reduced salary. But the ban, if it is confirmed before the summer window opens, would make that impossible. The only way of being sure that Torres would continue was to sign him from Milan during this window and they didn’t.

Even if they can sign in the summer, it was no longer clear that they wanted Torres to stay. After all, while Simeone had talked about the importance of a sense of “belonging”, and embraced Torres, he admitted that his future at the club would depend on his performances. And that’s where the doubts lay.

Torres returned to Atlético seven and a half years on, a hero gratefully heading home and determined to repay them. He’d never beaten rivals Real before and then, on his “re-debut” in the cup, he did; eight days later, he scored at the Bernabéu for the first time. For the second, too. He even scored 38 seconds into the next round against Barcelona and contributed an assist in that 4-0 win over Real. But in the end, he scored just three league goals last season and Saturday’s strike was just his third this season.

Against Eibar, he had come on as a substitute. He has only started seven times in the league and his last start was last year. Injury has not helped, of course, but it was not just that. Simeone no longer seemed to see a place for him. When you are a striker your difficulties are quantifiable, there is no hiding place, however much fans admire you – and for many Atlético supporters Torres is the most important player in their history. And although he said all the right things, as he always does, it felt like the end might be drawing near.

During this winter window, there were suggestions that Torres could leave now, but the man who did go was Jackson Martínez. A photo shows nine men in a room: eight of them are grinning, the one who isn’t is the one who actually has to go and play football in China. Jackson had accepted that move; Torres would not. His agent talked of an offer that would make him among the best paid players in the world but he did not want to leave: a World Cup, European Championship, European Cup and Uefa Cup winner, he was desperate to win something with his club, to give himself this last chance, even if in the summer he did have to go. Besides, how could he go on 99?

It is tempting to suggest that Torres’s 100th goal alone vindicates the decision to stay, that whatever else happens now Saturday’s moment will never be taken from him; that what no matter what the shirt he gave to Briñas and that Briñas decided to share with everyone will always hang in the club’s museum. But it is as natural as it is necessary to look beyond that too. It could be that there remains a risk that his 100th is his last, the end not just a staging post, yet it is also tempting to see the 100th as a liberation, to see things differently now, to grasp at the hope of more. No least because things are not as they were a week ago.

“Jackson’s failure is my fault,” Simeone said when he left. His fault, Torres’s opportunity? When it came to the numbers Torres was not contributing any less than the other strikers, Antoine Griezmann apart. Griezmann has 12 in the league, Jackson left with two, Correa has two, Carrasco has three and Vietto has one. Torres now has three. More to the point, he now has 100, the anxiety and the need met at last; “I’m delighted the goal has returned,” Simeone said. He needed this too. Jackson left last week. Torres returned to fitness the same week. On Thursday night he recovered an old superstition: he went out for a burger. Two days later he scored, 20 matches since his last goal, 15 years since his first goal, and 21 years since Manuel Briñas laid eyes on the 10-year-old with the blond mop and the freckles.

Talking points

• “Let’s be clear: on Sunday we have to deliver,” Gary Neville said after his Valencia side were hammered 7-0 by Barcelona in midweek. On Sunday, they did not deliver. Instead, they were defeated 1-0 by Real Betis, meaning that they have still not won in nine league games under Neville. He refused to resign after that Barcelona defeat and he did the same again in Seville, vowing to carry on, despite saying that every defeat feels like “a punch in the face”. Things are getting worse, with almost 90% of fans saying that he should resign. For the third time in five days, supporters gathered at Paterna to protest, chanting against players, directors and now the manager too. There was a moment on Wednesday when a small angry group of fans were coming to the end of chanting “Gary, vete ya!” when there was a pause and from somewhere in the crowd a voice could be heard asking: “Hey,” the voice asked, “does anyone know how you say that in English?” No one offered up the answer – “Gary, go now!” – but they don’t really need to. Neville knows, even if he did repeatedly refuse to admit on Sunday that his side are in a relegation battle now, which they probably are, and claimed somewhat unconvincingly that his team have been unlucky. They haven’t been: they have been dreadful. He did admit that results under him have been “completely unacceptable”.

• It’s not like Valencia had been beaten by a good team, either. In fact, they had been defeated by the team with the worst home record in Spain. Real Betis have won just twice at home all season … against David Moyes’s Real Sociedad and Gary Neville’s Valencia.

• Javi Gracia. Quietly going about being the best(?) manager in the league.

• “I told him he has to shoot more.” So said Zidane, so simple. Real Madrid were second best away at Granada but an 85th minute belter from Luka Modric –their best player this season, along with Karim Benzema – rescued a victory. It’s one thing hammering teams at home, another doing it away. Had they not won, and they really shouldn’t have done, it might have been goodbye to the league, leaving them trailing Barcelona by six points plus goal difference with Barcelona having a game in hand. “Luka gave us life,” Zidane said.

• Barcelona weren’t much better. In fact, they might have been worse against a very impressive Levante side. An own goal that went in off David Navarro’s arse and another for Luis Suárez right at the end, his 20th in the league this season, gave them a 2-0 win. Another early kick off, another struggle, but another win: that’s 10 in a row now and 28 games without losing, equalling a club record. It’s odd but it’s true: Barcelona are good in the dark, bad in the light.

• “I really enjoyed watching them,” Paco Jémez said after his Rayo team beat Las Palmas 2-0. The second goal in particular was gorgeous, while Jozabed hit the bar from near the halfway line.

Results: Málaga 3-0 Getafe, Atlético 3-1 Eibar, Rayo 2-0 Las Palmas, Athletic 0-0 Villarreal, Sporting 1-1 Deportivo, Levante 0-2 Barcelona, Betis 1-0 Valencia, Celta 1-1 Sevilla, Granada 1-2 Real Madrid. Monday: Espanyol v Real Sociedad.