Permanent Leeds United exit for Diego Llorente ‘high likelihood’ after £6m-a-year reveal – Phil Hay
There is a “high likelihood” that Diego Llorente will leave Leeds United for Roma “permanently at some stage”, according to Phil Hay.
The Athletic’s Whites reporter said on The Square Ball (9 September) that the Spanish defender is probably going to stay with the Serie A side long term rather than return to Elland Road, despite being given a new Leeds contract in December.
That deal appears to have made him one of the highest-paid players in the squad with CEO Angus Kinnear suggesting the club paid him “£6million a year” in his interview with The Square Ball on 7 September, before they got him off the wage bill on loan in the Italian capital, which equates to around £115,000-a-week
Dab Moylan said of Kinnear’s reveal (46m 50s): “When it came up and he said £6m a year I went, ‘ok fine yeah footballers earn millions of pounds a year’ in my head and then thought of the next thing and moved on.
“Then when I was editing it I went, ‘I wonder how much that is a week… Oh! That’s a lot of money a week’.”
After he then suggested it may not have been an exact figure given Kinnear’s unwillingness to discuss specific contract terms elsewhere, Hay responded: “The line we were given when he signed his new contract was that centre-backs are getting increasingly expensive, which is true.
“The caveat to that is that good centre-backs are getting very expensive and I don’t think much of what we’ve seen of Llorente has convinced us at all that in leagues like the Premier League he’s what you need.
“Ok he’s gone to Roma and had a couple of loans out there, but Roma specifically didn’t activate the option that they had on him which I think was supposed to be the fee that Leeds had signed him for.
“Taking him on loan again I think there’s probably a high likelihood that he will go there permanently at some stage.
“But you’ve already seen with Rasmus Kristensen that it doesn’t seem to be going very well for him at Roma, which I don’t think has come as a huge surprise.”
ASAP
You could fill a book with the baffling decisions that have been made at Leeds United in just the past year, and no doubt some people will do just that.
But rewarding Llorente with an extension to that doesn’t expire until 2026 just before Christmas is one of the strangest, given he had looked well below par as a regular in the back line that saw Marcelo Bielsa fired and relegation only avoided at the death the campaign before, and then had lost his place in what proved to be the worst defence in the Premier League last season.
It appeared to have somehow paid off when Roma agreed to take him on loan in January with a permanent option that would have made the club back their £18m.
But Jose Mourinho’s side apparently came to their senses in the summer and decided they weren’t going to pay that, so he is back there on loan again now.
And while it is clearly a bonus to get huge wages off the books, if they are indeed that high, that was only a problem of the club’s own making.
That Robin Koch, also heavily responsible for the dreadful goals conceded record last term but with a much greater market to sell to, is set to leave for nothing at the end of his loan at Eintracht Frankfurt this year makes it all the worse.
Neither are actually awful players but they too often looked it at Elland Road, and the club will have to hope Roma do indeed wish to take Llorente, 30, off their hands permanently lest they be scrambling to get out from underneath that contract again next summer.
In other Leeds United news, Kinnear has got some swift blowback from his other contract claims during the interview from the man he used to work for.