“I normally take a bit of time to hit form and knew I’d have to work a great deal, also because I pretty much missed the whole of last season,” said the Bosman signing from Athletic Bilbao.
“In addition I needed to settle in and learn the language – and adapting to a new environment is never an easy task for anyone.
“I’m getting on great here and feel the Coach has faith in me, but I know I need to keep working to get back into peak condition.”
The 28-year-old’s strike proved to be the winner after Carlos Tevez had cancelled out Verona’s shock advantage.
“I didn’t expect to net on my debut,” added the Spaniard. “I’m happy about scoring and contributing to the team’s victory.”
I remember the Bilbao fan who posted on the forum and talked about Llorente and his positives and negatives. He did not think Llorente would succeed here, from what I recall, because he was a confidence player and needed to be top dog and always played in the team or he lost confidence and it took a long time to get back. So the thought was, if he was rotated or had competition he would not be in top form. The guy also said, it took Llorente ages to recover from injury and hit form when he came back from injury so at a small club like Bilbao, they were always patient with him but he felt Juventus would not be patient due to the many strikers and demand for results.
I feel that Llorente's comments kinda confirm what that guy said, about it taking him time to hit form, and it is therefore really smart of Conte to play him once he was physically able to perform. Because if he played him from the first game and he played poor or was out of form he would have been slaughtered in the media and his confidence would have been shattered for a long time (maybe even his whole spell at Juve because a first impression is everything). Now that he has played his first game, played well and scored. Llorente's confidence should be very high and hopefully he can continue to build and get fitter. I remember the Llorente of Bilbao 2 seasons ago and he was a monster of a player. Incredibly powerful, skillful and brilliant technique. If we can get him to that level I feel it will make Juve something totally different to what we have seen offensively. He might not be as much of a visionary as Vucinic when it comes to linking with his team mates but just by being such a menace in the box and such a focal point, our entire offense will benefit greatly, as we saw with Tevez today who had loads of space when he was not considered to be the main goal threat.
Also, Llorente was compared to Toni by the media and Toni himself this week. I see similarities to Toni but Llorente has more pace and Toni did not fail here because he was a big center forward, he failed cuz he was 34 and was far past his best. The good aspect of Llorente being similar to Toni is that as goal scorer Toni did not peak till later in his career and it seems the same with Llorente who had a modest scoring rate for many years before he started scoring for fun for Bilbao. So hopefully he can be that guy for us, like when Toni went from Palermo to Fiorentina/Munich.
I hope Conte makes him a key player for us for a long time to come. Also, I would hope we take advantage of his dominance in the air via crosses and also with creative set pieces like Napoli had with Cavani or Chelsea had with Drogba. I could imagine how much trouble teams would have with all of our size on set plays.. Llorente, Bonucci, Chiellini, Pogba, Barzagli and Licht.