Barcelona strongly pursued Matthijs de Ligt as they intended to bring him to Camp Nou along with his good friend Frenkie de Jong, but they ended up losing out to Juventus. Mino Raiola, who represents the interests of the young defender, has now lifted the lid on why it happened that way.
As quoted by Marca, the agent said Barcelona believed De Ligt was ‘like cheese’. He claims that many Dutch people see Barcelona almost as a Dutch club, rather than a foreign one. They believed, as he is Dutch and playing at Ajax, a club that, like Barcelona themselves, rightly consider Johann Cruyff as an enormous influence in their history, De Ligt would certainly choose them over any other suitor once it was certain De Jong would move there.
But Raiola revealed that Juventus were actually the 19-year-old centre-back’s first choice all the time, indicating that Barcelona simply had to put in much more effort into their case to persuade him to reconsider, which they obviously didn’t.
De Jong recently said De Ligt could still join Barcelona in the future, but that future is very hard to imagine at the moment.
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