Fernando Llorente has admitted that he could leave Tottenham next year with his contract due to expire at the end of the season.
The 33-year-old striker was signed from Swansea on a two-year deal in 2017, but has spent pretty much all of his spell in North London playing second fiddle to Harry Kane.
As it stands, Llorente will be available as a free agent in at the end of June 2019, and he has admitted that a return to Spanish club Athletic Bilbao is certainly a possibility.
“I would gladly rejoin Bilbao next summer. I will see what offers I have at the end of the season,” he said, as quoted by the Sun.
“I could continue in the Premier League, go back to Spain or return to Italy – where I was very happy.”
OPINION
Not one Tottenham fan will be gutted to see the back of Llorente. It was an odd move to sign him anyway as Mauricio Pochettino has usually always gone for younger options in the transfer market, but Llorente was clearly brought in as a replacement for Vincent Janssen, who struggled in his debut year in North London. Llorente will be 34 by the time his £75,000-a-week (Spotrac) contract expires and with the fact that he has made 33 appearances in all competitions with the club – mainly as a substitute – it’s pretty obvious that he won’t be offered new terms. The ex-Juventus target man has only featured twice so far this season as well, which means that a new deal with the Premier League club is off the table. Llorente may want to return to Spain and Bilbao’s strict Basque-only policy means that they could find it hard to refuse re-signing the centre-forward.