Never_Forget40
Banned
This!
Matthijs de Ligt
- Thread starter El Flaco
- Start date
This!
Of course people will be bitter.
Its not like we could get only one of them, we could have gotten both of them. He looked bound to join us, we had a clear cut opportunity to sign him, only to let go of him in order to pursuit Neymar or because we couldn't offer him 7.5M (that's bonkers when you're getting CB of that quality for a reasonable price).
I'd rather have paid 7.5M per year, rather than to wait for the next successful CB to emerge, and there's no guarantee he will be as good and won't demand as much money and that too for 75M.
Its pre season or whatever, he is only 19 year old, he has been playing great for almost 2 years now. If he performs well, it just adds up to his reputation. He will definitely make mistakes, he is still young and learning.
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What do you expect him to say?
That he wanted to go to Barca, but they couldn't pay the wages while Juve did, so he joined them instead.
Its quite obvious we made a contact, but talks didn't materialize in the end, and he ended up choosing his 2nd choice i.e Juve. And if we wanted to join Juve so badly, why would he insist on having a release clause.
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I have no doubt he would have chosen Barça if the wages and playing time were equal to Juve offer.
I'm just saying he spoke up and doesn't stay in the shadow of Raiola. Many times, the players enjoy Raiola work and use him as a shield, as if Raiola manipulate the innocent players. Here, he clearly says it was his choice.
I probably wanted him more than most but after watching some old clips and these two preseason games where he looks a different beast when FDJ isn’t there ....
My one concern was always his lack of pace/ sluggishness but everyone said his awareness would compensate for that .
Today’s game IS all about speed after all .
I’m wondering if we’ve actually dodged a bullet here ..
My one concern was always his lack of pace/ sluggishness but everyone said his awareness would compensate for that .
Today’s game IS all about speed after all .
I’m wondering if we’ve actually dodged a bullet here ..
Luftstalag14
Culé de Celestial Empire
I don’t believe our alleged pursuit of Neymar (Bartomeu and Cardoner have denied it multiple times that we are after him) ruined or complicated our offer to De Ligt. All along we were very serious in our pursuit of De Ligt, we reached an agreement with Ajax for 75m a long time ago and we even had some sort of personal agreement with De Ligt in April (if we believed the Catalan media) before Ajax started flying high in the CL and De Ligt’s perceived market value started going through the roof. We had the money to sign De Ligt and it had nothing to do with Neymar or anyone else, the issue was we didn’t want to break the bank and more importantly, wage structure for him salary-wise. As I said yesterday, at 7.5m net per year means he would be making 2m more than De Jong, and many other players. If we had paid him that much we would have a hard time renewing other players, including some senior players without giving a steep and significant pay raise and we can’t afford to do that.
In the end it is about weighing the pros and cons. In my opinion we made the wise decision not to succumb to De Ligt’s and Raiola’s wage demands. De Ligt is very good but let’s be honest, he is a CB and there are plenty of good CBs out there.
Just because he is big, doesn't mean he's slow.
Lol we already discussed this MANY times in this thread.
A world class defender doesn't has to be quick.
If pace is your best asset as a defender. Than you have a big problem.
Good judgment, timing, leadership, positional awareness and tackling are much more important. Besides that, De Ligt is also great on the ball and mentally a beast.
He also can play great without Frenkie.
2 years ago when Ajax reached the EL final. Frenkie was still a nobody playing for the reserve team of Ajax.
Lol we already discussed this MANY times in this thread.
A world class defender doesn't has to be quick.
If pace is your best asset as a defender. Than you have a big problem.
Good judgment, timing, leadership, positional awareness and tackling are much more important. Besides that, De Ligt is also great on the ball and mentally a beast.
He also can play great without Frenkie.
2 years ago when Ajax reached the EL final. Frenkie was still a nobody playing for the reserve team of Ajax.
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Time will tell ..
That said .. are there any effective/successful CBs around today ??
Liverpool’s VVD is lightening fast
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Devils
Senior Member
Huge problem.
Ask any Liverpool fan the top things they like about VVD and they will definitely say his athleticism and ability to keep up with pacey forwards.
It's a tremendous asset.
V Dijk is an exceptional good defender. But we all know that he's also a late bloomer.
De Ligt is playing on a high level since day 1. If he keeps progressing like this. He will be on van Dijks level within 2 years.
De Ligt plays with a lot of space behind him. He has played like this his whole life (Ajax plays the same system in all Youth teams). He doesn't know any better.
And he never had any problems with pacey players. Ask Mbappe... if you don't believe me.
People should understand that being big doesn't make you slow. Being fat makes you slow. Fat and big are different things. And even if he was a slow turd. Who cares... all my favorite defenders were slow...
Koeman was also slow as a brick.
V Dijk is an exceptional good defender. But we all know that he's also a late bloomer.
De Ligt is playing on a high level since day 1. If he keeps progressing like this. He will be on van Dijks level within 2 years.
De Ligt plays with a lot of space behind him. He has played like this his whole life (Ajax plays the same system in all Youth teams). He doesn't know any better.
And he never had any problems with pacey players. Ask Mbappe... if you don't believe me.
People should understand that being big doesn't make you slow. Being fat makes you slow. Fat and big are different things. And even if he was a slow turd. Who cares... all my favorite defenders were slow...
Koeman was also slow as a brick.
Koeman is one of my all time faves but he played in different times ..
Even proAM charity games are played at a faster pace than the best teams of the 70’s for example ..
Luftstalag14
Culé de Celestial Empire
It depends on what systems you play. In systems where you park the bus often and your CBs spend most of their time inside and around their own penalty box, you don’t need a lot of pace and instead positioning and awareness are much more important. Also in compact systems where midfielders and the defenders are not too far away from one another and they cover each other well pace is also not that important. In a system like ours where we play a pretty highline and our defenders and midfielders often push out even to the other half supporting the attacking game pace would be important, as we have often found out in the past that our opponents often hit us in the back via a long pass behind our defenders or they quickly cut through our often non-existent midfield, which resulted in our defenders, especially our CBs chasing the ball a lot. So we would value a pacey CB. Not saying it is more important than everything else but it is important.
4 years ago Marc bartra was playing for Barcelona, while VVD was still playing for Southampton.
And FDJ has made a tremendous growth, even on his debut he was the standout player for Barca with 100% pass accuracy.
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