Spurs Boss Mauricio Pochettino and Striker Fernando Llorente Overjoyed With Juventus Draw
Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino and his striker Fernando Llorente have both expressed their delight at being drawn against Juventus in the Champions League Round of 16.
The first leg of the fixture will be played on February 13 at the Juventus Stadium, with the return leg played at Wembley on March 7.
Llorente will be returning to the club he spent two years with between the summers of 2013 and 2015, while Pochettino's family originally came from Turin.
Speaking to the Spurs website, the Argentinian manager said: "It's fantastic because my family came from Italy, from Turin — unbelievable!"
Pochettino means "a little bit" when translated in Italian, and he explained: "My surname is from Italy. It's a city and a club I've always wanted to play and it's now fantastic to be going to the city of Turin to play against Juventus."
Meanwhile, Llorente was allowed to leave on a free to Sevilla in 2015, he still claims to have "great memories" of his time in Turin.
The Spanish target man said: "I have a lot of friends there. I’m very excited about this draw. I played there for two years and won five titles. I wanted this team.
"I have great memories and I enjoyed my time at the club a lot. It's one of the biggest clubs in the world. It will be an amazing game. They are a very good team with very, very good players.
“We can be confident in ourselves because we are a very good team, focused, concentrated, aggressive - we can do amazing things.”
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Spurs came out on top of a Champions League group that no one really gave them a chance in - finishing ahead of Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund - and Pochettino reiterated Llorente's message of confidence in the ability of this exciting Spurs squad.
"It's so important to be competitive and we've shown we can do that, we've shown we can deal with the pressure of the Champions League. This will be a different game to Real Madrid and it's so exciting to play Juventus."
