Diego Llorente makes the switch to Leeds United. The Premier League club and Real Sociedad announce the transfer of the defender on Tuesday evening via the official channels. The transfer of the central defender who turned 27 last month involved an amount of twenty million euros. A fifth of this goes to Real Madrid, the club where Llorente trained and was under contract between 2002 and 2017.

Llorente made his official debut in Real Madrid’s main squad in June 2013, but never got further than two matches. The defender was loaned out to Rayo Vallecano in 2015/16 and Málaga was his temporary employer a season later. In the summer of 2017, Real Madrid did business for seven million euros with Real Sociedad, which also had to agree to a resale percentage of thirty percent on the added value.

Real Madrid can thus still touch 3.9 million euros more than three years later. The reigning champion seems to close this transfer period without a single purchase. The past weeks were mainly dominated by the goodbye, temporarily or otherwise, of expensive employees or players with no prospect of playing time. Real Madrid sold Óscar Rodriguez, Alberto Soro, Achraf Hakimi and Sergio Reguilón, let James Rodriguez go to Everton on a free transfer (with resale percentage) and hired out Brahim Diaz, Dani Ceballos and Gareth Bale, among others.

Although Llorente had a € 50 million transfer clause in his two more seasons contract, Leeds has nevertheless managed to attract the Spain international for a considerably lower amount. Manager Marcelo Bielsa insisted on attracting a new defender. The PhD student lost the opening game with Liverpool 4-3 and then won with the same figures against Fulham. The arrival of Llorente means more competition for Pascal Struijk. The Dutchman started in the duel with Liverpool and participated for 75 minutes in the EFL Cup game with Hull City.