Fernando Llorente is 28 years old.
Muscular and an imposing figure at 6'5", he has been remarkably durable throughout a professional career now in the early days of its 12th season.
Nicknamed El Rey Leon—“The Lion King” in Spanish—during his time with Basque giants Athletic Bilbao, the bearded, floppy-haired striker should be enjoying his prime years and positioning himself for a starting berth in the Spanish national team as the 2014 World Cup approaches.
But Llorente has never been much concerned with the present.
No, his focus has typically been somewhere else—some place off in the distance or, as he divulged in a Tuesday interview with Marca, even in his past.
“There was a real interest,” revealed the now-Juventus forward regarding Real Madrid’s supposed approaches for him several years ago.
“[Madrid] tried to sign me a couple of times, but Athletic wouldn’t let me leave so it was impossible.”
By the summer of 2012 it was clear Llorente was angling for a move away from SanMames. With only a year remaining on his contract he assumed—ultimately incorrectly—that the club would cash in on him rather than let him leave for nothing the following July.
Juventus had turned his head and were thought to be mulling a €20 million bid for his signature. But instead of negotiating with the Serie A winners, Athletic offered Llorentea new pact, although as soon as it became clear he had no intention of remaining at the club a once-fruitful relationship shrivelled quickly.
On October 1, 2012—two days after a 2-0 defeat at home to Basque rivals RealSociedad—Llorente, already training with the reserves at Athletic’s Lezama complex, had an altercation with manager Marcelo Bielsa and stormed off the pitch during the middle of a session. (ESPN FC)
Having been used exclusively as a substitute to that point due to a perceived lack of commitment,Llorente would have to wait a further seven weeks before finally playing from the beginning in a Primera Division match againstDeportivo.
It was one of just four La Liga starts he would make in a season that yielded just five goals in all competitions—a far cry from the 29 he had posted the previous campaign.
Having spent nine months as a bench player at Bilbao, and bitter from the experience of it, Llorente could have hardly been expected to hit the ground running when he finally joined Juventus during the summer. And while expectations for his adaptation to the squad were modest, he has so far failed to reach even those.
Coming into Sunday’s match away to Fiorentina he had played just over 30 minutes from four Serie A appearances, and while he was given the full 90 in which to make an impression at Stadio Artemio Franchi he managed only a single shot at goal and was largely unimpressive as Juventus suffered their first loss of the season.
“The training is more demanding [atJuventus],” he told Spanish outlet ASon Tuesday, via Football-Espana. “It is barbaric...The workouts are brutal.”
Arriving in a team in which ingratiating himself to manager Antonio Conte was always going to be difficult (Conte, more than most managers, picks his teams from a small group of players he trusts within the squad), so far it seems as though Llorente has been doing anything but.
Although he took part in a full pre-season with the Bianconeri he has nevertheless played fewer minutes than each of Carlos Tevez, Mirko Vucinic, Fabio Quagliarella and Sebastian Giovinco. And when he has been given a chance he has done nothing to convince Conte he deserves another—underachieving to the point where a loan move away from the club, possibly to Arsenal, has been bandied about, as per the Mirror:
But instead of buckling down and making a case for himself, Llorente has merely revisited those old Madrid rumours while complaining about the training regimen atJuventus.
His story, quite unfortunately, is fast becoming one of what might have been—the accomplishments, both at club and international levels, that might have been realized had he been as bothered with the here and now as the past and future.