Farewell to Fernando Llorente

This week the news of Fernando Llorente’s retirement from professional football went beyond the public level. The striker has been without a team since last season having experienced firsthand the frustration of staying one step away from promotion to the First Division with Eibar. It’s still hard to assimilate the double brutal league results for Gaizka Garitano, Patxi Ferreira and their entire squad. Soccer.

With what the Armero club experienced last season, something similar to what happened a few years ago with Llorente at Athletic happened to me. I couldn’t understand it. So far they have not given me one or several real reasons that would help me understand this.

What happened then was not normal. Not only around the center forward, but also some of his teammates at the time. I will never forget the large part of the public at the Bernabéu who cheered and applauded the then rojiblanco striker when he warmed up on the wing to replace a colleague while Gurpegi dedicated himself to the songs and poems of those in charge in collecting this kind of incident in the stadiums did not listen despite not being, not being, deaf.

Inside the war

An internal war had broken out many months before at Athletic. Llorente, I insist that I do not yet know the real reasons why he did not renew, began to stop being an idol in Bilbao to be the reason for the dispute between his defenders and his detractors. The rojiblanco club was saved by the fact that Aritz Aduriz’s best years as a lion were yet to come.

Can you imagine what happened to the rojiblanco team with both of them in the same eleven in full condition? The man from San Sebastian hung up his boots with all his teammates and the family listening to him and cheering him on at grass level in a vacuum, due to the pandemic, San Mamés. The one from Rincón del Soto, however, made his football agur official in a television program and by pure chance.