Following the Netherlands loss against Portugal during the semi-final of the UEFA Nations League, Cristiano Ronaldo was seen in conversation with young Dutch defender Matthijs de Ligt. It was later revealed that the icon told the youngster that he should move to Juventus. Last year was de Ligt’s breakthrough year. He helped to fire Ajax to the semi-finals of the Champions League which included memorable victories against Real Madrid as well as the Old Lady of Italian football while they also won the Eredivisie convincingly.
To top it off, de Ligt captained the side at just 19-years-old. De Ligt ended up opting to join Juventus ahead of the upcoming season for an initial fee of €75 million. Many believed that it was Ronaldo’s comments which convinced the player to join Juventus over Barcelona. However, the player himself as since spoken out and said that the conversation with the Portugal captain did not play as big a role as thought.
“He was not the main factor in making me choose Juventus,” he said as reported by Tuttosport.
“There are many factors that led me to decide to accept Juve.
“But it is clear that it is nice when someone as big as Cristiano says something to you, but, really, it wasn’t the key factor.”
Meanwhile, there is little doubt that Ronaldo and Juventus will be going all-out to win the Champions League next season. The Old Lady has won everything that there is to win in Italian football but the Champions League remains the one piece of major silverware which has eluded them. They have so far had an interesting summer which has seen them bring Gianluigi Buffon, Aaron Ramsey, Adrien Rabiot, Merih Demiral, Luca Pellegrini, Cristian Romero in addition to de Light.
The Old Lady will be favourites to win the Serie A ahead of Inter Milan who are expected to be improved next season following the appointment of Antonio Conte as their new boss. de Ligt has been playing for Juve this pre-season. He has looked impressive but was rather unfortunate to have scored an own goal during the team’s 1-1 draw with Inter Milan which they went on to win on penalties.
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