Oh FFS some of you need to stop being bitter. He signed for Juve and he is a great prospect but we needed De Jong more! Simple as that! So stop being bitter, accept the fact we can't sign every single player and enjoy football!
We're bitter because we were all but confirmed to get him, a great player and a world class talent, a true warrior, who could lead our defensive line at least for a decade, but then Neymar starts crying in the bed he made for himself, and our stupid Board, under pressure to bring us as many attacking flashy new toys as possible to make the glory hunter fans forget last season's humiliation, completely abandoned the De Ligt deal, stopped trying to negotiate, and for what? A transfer we're never gonna get over the line anyway? We'll waste the rest of the summer leaking to the press how unhappy Neymar is in Paris, PSG will say pay 200M cash or fuck you, and we'll hold off on all our other targets because we're gonna be naive thinking as summer draws to a close, PSG will somehow magically settle and drop the price or agree to some swap deal. I'll be happy if we'll at least get the absolutely needed LB backup in Firpo and not botch that one too. As for PSG, I truly believe at this point they would rather swap him to Madrid just for Bale, even if we gave them Coutinho (who is alone a better player and thus a better deal for PSG), and another player or even two more (Raki? Malcom?), just to spite us. It's Thiago Silva and Verratti all over again.
We had a plan, get De Jong in January = DONE, pay the release clause for Griezmann (don't create more drama with trying to bring down the price and piss off Atletico even more than we already did by taking their best player), but even more importantly don't waste time for this deal, just get it done quickly and swiftly, and then focus all your attention to convince De Ligt to come and tie him up before other clubs get involved. You saw how back when we were massive favourites to get De Ligt, no other club even looked at the De Ligt, since they assumed it was more or less a done deal? But then our Board got their heads turned by the Neymar drama, took their eye off the ball, and Juve felt an opportunity opening up, and pounced! And then Bartomeu with his massive ego thought he'd stroll in and steal the deal like he did with De Jong, but he was dead wrong. I'm absolutely certain that at the time he made that interview about knowing where De Ligt will play next season, he was 100% sure that De Ligt would choose us. Now of course Raiola was a pain in the ass too, if it weren't for him, i'm absolutely sure we would've tied up De Ligt back in April or May, maybe even in January already, cause i'm sure Raiola was the one, who gave the advice to De Ligt to wait for a bidding war (transfer and wages wise) in the summer and not make any hasty decisions in the winter, cause he wanted his 10M, but the simple fact is, we didn't try hard enough in the end, we weren't as committed as we were for De Jong, and De Ligt sensed that and chose the other club.
