£3m summer exit aims surprise dig at Leeds United amid honest 'hard time' admission
Leeds United were really struggling when the defender initially moved on.
Diego Llorente has aimed a thinly-veiled dig at Leeds United after admitting Real Betis’ ambition and dressing room morale was ‘the opposite’ of his former club.
Llorente secured a permanent move away from Elland Road in July, with Leeds accepting a bid believed to have been worth around £3million from Betis. The experienced defender joined up with former Whites teammate Marc Roca in southern Spain and has impressed, with only goalkeeper Rui Silva playing more league minutes.
It’s been over 18 months since Llorente played for Leeds, with the 31-year-old spending a season-and-a-half on loan at AS Roma before joining Betis, and the centre-back has reflected on his time in West Yorkshire during the November international break. And he has appeared to suggest the dressing room at Elland Road was lacking the ambition he craved.
“It was a complicated period [at Leeds], because many factors came together,” Llorente told Diario de Sevilla. “It was still a time of Covid and there was no normality either on a personal or sporting level. It was also my first adventure outside Spain, which implies a necessary adaptation because the English culture is very different to ours.
“I did have a bit of a hard time in the first few months, but I got through it thanks to hard work and with the help of the medical staff. It was a coincidence of life that I ended up going to the Euros that season after showing a good level.
“It was a very important decision, and I wanted to know where I was going to go. This time it was a bit the other way around and it was more people from Betis who contacted me. Then I did speak with Marc Roca and Pablo Fornals, and they told me what I knew they were going to tell me, that it was a great dressing room and that there was great ambition to achieve important things. It was a bit the opposite than with Leeds.”
Llorente initially cited personal reasons for his January 2023 exit with a loan move to Roma sanctioned by then-head coach Jesse Marsch. Leeds were at a point of real struggle both on and off the pitch, with poor results leaving them languishing around the relegation zone as discontent intensified.
Marsch was sacked less than a month after Llorente’s exit and his replacement, Javi Gracia, lasted just 10 weeks before club chiefs appointed Sam Allardyce to try and work a four-game miracle to keep them up. Sporting director Victor Orta resigned following Gracia’s sacking, with Leeds relegated after picking up just one point under Allardyce.
Llorente was expected to join Roma permanently in the summer but incoming sporting director Florian Ghisolfi reportedly pulled a deal worth between £3-5m, leaving the defender in limbo. His move to Betis came for a fraction of the £16m Leeds paid to sign him in 2020, but much of that fee had been amortised over his four-year spell under contract, with club chiefs also happy to get his high wages off the books.