Fabio Paratici and Juventus are setting their sights on Matthijs de Ligt

Even as we live in a world where Tuttosport can report that Juventus want to sign Cristiano Ronaldo and it actually turns out to be the truth, we know that, most of the time, anything that comes from Turin’s biggest sports is usually for the sole purpose of hype without much payoff. For every Ronaldo story that turned out to be true this past summer, there’s probably at least 100 — and likely much, much more — that had the opposite kind of effect.

It’s the same for a number of players over the years. One of those recent names is Ajax starlet Matthijs de Ligt, who is almost certainly going to grace Tuttosport’s front page a good number of times before, during and probably after the summer transfer window arrives.

And, as we now know, it’s not just because it’s Tuttosport trying to sell themselves some papers with the same recycled storylines. (Although, that’s always possible.) We know now that Juventus’ Chief Football Officer, Fabio Paratici, has pretty much thrown his club’s hat into the de Ligt derby that is expected to go down a few months from now.

“We’re on the right track for Romero. De Ligt is also certainly one of the best young players around so we’re looking at him with great care.”

(Source: Football Italia)

That above quote is just a small part of a massive interview with Paratici that was released earlier this week in La Gazzetta dello Sport. There’s obviously a whole bunch of different topics that can be taken out of it, but when Paratici is openly talking about one of the planet’s best young prospects, a player who is already making a massive impact on the club and country level at the age of 19, it’s going to be noteworthy.

Juventus’ interest in Genoa’s Cristian Romero is there and more than just transfer rumors. It’s really looking like that’s more along those lines when it comes to de Ligt as well, with Paratici’s words making it sound like addressing Juve’s aging central defensive unit is going to be a priority this summer.

Now, that doesn’t mean we’re going to be immune from transfer rumors in February. Calciomercato, a relatively comparable Italian outlet to Tuttosport in terms of how many rumors they churn out on any given week, also reported earlier this week that Juventus has now become the favorite to land de Ligt this summer over the likes of Barcelona, Manchester City and Liverpool.

A big reason for de Ligt potentially landing at Juventus? His agent, Mino Raiola.

Take the whole “with great care” line whichever way you want to. But when it comes to trying to sign de Ligt, it definitely sounds like Juventus are going to be in the mix — which should make Tuttosport happy since they’ll sell a few more papers as a result.