Fernando Llorente
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| Fernando Llorente | ||
| Personal information | ||
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Fernando Llorente Torres | |
| Date of birth | February 26, 1985 | |
| Place of birth | Rincón de Soto, La Rioja, Spain | |
| Height | 1.93 m (6 ft 4 in) | |
| Playing position | Centre forward | |
| Club information | ||
| Current club | Athletic Bilbao | |
| Number | 9 | |
| Youth clubs | ||
| 1995-1996 1997-2003 |
FC Funes Athletic Bilbao |
|
| Senior clubs1 | ||
| Years | Club | App (Gls)* |
| 2003–2004 2004–2005 2005– |
CD Baskonia Bilbao Athletic Athletic Bilbao |
33 (12) 16 (4) 95 (18) |
|
1 Senior club appearances and goals |
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Fernando Llorente Torres (born February 26, 1985 in Rincón de Soto) is a Spanish footballer, who currently plays for Athletic Bilbao in La Liga as a centre forward.
[edit] Club career
Llorente first joined the Athletic Bilbao setup in the 1996-97 season, at the age of 11. He spent his first many seasons in the various junior levels of the club, before being promoted to CD Baskonia of the Tercera División, effectively the Athletic third/U20 team, in 2003-04, as an 18-year-old. There, he scored 12 goals in 33 appearances, and this success paved way for his promotion to Bilbao Athletic, Athletic's reserve team in Segunda División B, for the 2004-05 season.
He featured in 16 games for the B-team and scored 4 goals in the first half of season, leading to another promotion, this time to the Athletic Bilbao first team. On January 16, 2005, 6 weeks before turning 20, he got his La Liga debut in a 1-1 draw with Espanyol. Three days later, in a Copa del Rey match against UD Lanzarote, he scored a hat-trick, prompting great expectations for his future with Athletic. He would go on to feature in all but five of the 19 remaining league games, and score 3 goals, while also featuring in three Cup matches and a UEFA Cup match against Austria Vienna. His strong performance in the U20 World Cup at the end of the season, including a 4-goal match against Chile, added to the expectations of a budding future.
In 2005-06, he scored in the opening day Basque derby 3-0 win against Real Sociedad, but since then found the goals hard to come by in the league, and was dropped for several games as Athletic battled in the bottom half of the table for the entire year, eventually finishing 12th. He did however score twice in a Cup game against CE L´Hospitalet in November, which helped keep him in the first team. A day before the first anniversary of his Athletic debut, he picked up another goal in a loss to FC Barcelona, but then hit another goalscoring drought, that lasted the rest of the season.
He started the 2006-07 season as the fourth-choice striker, behind Aritz Aduriz, Joseba Etxeberría and the veteran Ismael Urzaiz, but the team's poor form and a lack of production from all four forced then-coach Félix Sarriugarte into rotating the players. He put up similar figures to the previous season, scoring twice in 23 matches, including one in the dying minutes of a 1-1 away draw with Valencia, after he had been brought on from the bench in the 80th minute.
In 2007-08, Llorente became Athletic's undisputed first-choice forward, and netted 10 league goals for a side that finished in mid-table.
[edit] Awards
- Silver boot in the 2005 FIFA World Youth Championship
[edit] External links
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