Manchester United is getting close to signing Matthijs de Ligt, a defender for Bayern Munich who impressed Cristiano Ronaldo when he played for Real Madrid.
Manchester United is getting close to a deal for Matthijs de Ligt, and Cristiano Ronaldo has already said what he thinks of the defender. It’s safe to say that he likes him.
United has agreed to pay £51.5 million for two defenders from Bayern Munich, De Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui. Both players were supposed to get medicals on Monday. They are the third and fourth new players Erik ten Hag has added to his team this summer, after Joshua Zirkzee and Leny Yoro.
De Ligt played for Ajax under Ten Hag. As a teenager, he became the club’s youngest leader and led the Dutch giants to the Eredivisie title and a Champions League semifinal. The center-back chose to join Juventus after having a great season as captain.
But De Ligt played for the Netherlands against Portugal in the 2019 Nations League final before his move to Juventus was official. Ronaldo was impressed by the center back’s play, and the former United star tried to get De Ligt to join him in Turin.
“After the final, I knew for sure I wanted to join Juve,” De Ligt said soon after signing with the Italian team in 2019. “It was a big compliment to have Ronaldo ask me to join but it didn’t make the difference.”
De Ligt is still only 25 years old, but he has learned a lot since he made his name at Ajax and then chose to try himself in Italy. When the defender joined Ronaldo at Juventus, he showed the kind of mindset that United hopes De Ligt can bring to the team.
“It’s normal to feel pressure in sports. That doesn’t bother me. “On the field, I’ll show what I can do,” De Ligt said at the time. “I’m 19 years old, and I still want to get better. Every day you should work hard and learn. I want to get better as a player.
The Dutch player’s two-year stay at Bayern Munich is almost over, so it looks like he will be back with Ten Hag at Old Trafford. The young star from Ajax has said in the past that he wants to play on an attack-minded team. This gives United fans some hope that they can do better than eighth place last season.
Ten Hag still likes the former Ajax captain, and he admitted that he wanted to sign him before Bayern Munich did during his first season as United manager. Ten Hag claimed, though, that it was the club’s new people in charge of hiring who set their sights on De Ligt this summer.
“I wanted to sign him two years ago, but at that time, he was already very far along to join Bayern,” Ten Hag said last month about De Ligt. I didn’t come up with his name, believe it or not.
Leave a Reply