It's almost go time. The defender Diego Llorente (#14) is in position and waiting, while goalkeeper Mile Svilar (#99) is jogging back to protect his goal.

Llorente (Diego Javier Llorente Ríos in full) is one of our more senior players, being 30 at the time of the match and turning 31 in August. He's Spanish rather than Italian, having been born in Spain in 1993. Most of his younger years (2012-2017) were spent with various levels of Real Madrid, though he made only 2 appearances with the senior side in that time.

He doesn't seem to have been a favoured son there, having spent 2015-16 and 2016-17 on loan to Rayo Vallecano (a team based in a suburb of Madrid) and Málaga CF based in Andalusia, the southernmost province of Spain, respectively. In 2017 he was punted out of Real Madrid to Real Sociedad, which operates in the other end of the country from Málaga, specifically in the Basque country of northern Spain.

In 2020 they sold him on to Leeds United in the UK (reportedly for a fee of £18 million), where he made 51 appearances scoring 4 goals.

In 2023 he was sent on loan to AS Roma where, according to TransferMarkt.com, his contract is "Obligation to buy with conditions".

As for the vibe about him? The scuttlebutt is that he's not quite starter quality, but he's a solid backup in a defensive role. He seems to have been very much a "Moneyball" style buy. You don't build your future on 30 year olds, but you can still milk what they have left.