Reports: Juve meet with Mino Raiola for Matthijs de Ligt contract talks

By now, we all know who Matthijs de Ligt’s agent is. And because of who his agent is, there’s always going to be, at minimum, a small amount of worry that de Ligt’s agent is going to suddenly come to the line of thinking that it’s time for his client to find a new club. We’ve seen it happen before with Juventus players who are represented by Mino Raiola, and it’s probably going to continue well into the future with his other clients.

But is there a way to prolong what some people feel like is the inevitable at some point?

According to multiple reports in the Italian media Monday morning, Juventus might be taking steps to begin that potential prolonging process.

As stated in a front-page story in Tuesday’s edition of Tuttosport — although, as you might imagine, not the front-page story because of what the Italian national team did the night before — and a report from journalist Nicolo Schira, Juventus have started talks about a new contract for the 22-year-old de Ligt. One of the main reasons, according to Tuttosport, as to why Juventus and Raiola have met is to add another year onto the Dutchman’s current deal that runs through 2024 but also could result in a lowering of his release clause, which currently sits at €150 million and can be activated in the summer of 2022.

Both Tuttosport and Calciomercato suggest that the release clause could be lowered to as “little” as €120 million if de Ligt were to sign a contract extension with Juventus.

Because we can’t have many nice things during an international break, we have seen de Ligt be linked by the English press with a potential move to one of the country’s biggest spenders like Chelsea or Manchester City or even with Antonio Conte’s new project at Tottenham with the man who signed the young Dutchman, Fabio Paratici, now pulling the strings at Spurs.

Tuttosport made it clear though: Juventus have no intention of selling de Ligt any time soon and feel confident that they will be able to keep him on the roster despite the fact that the club’s bottom line has taken a huge hit during the pandemic.

But when Raiola is involved, there’s always going to be that risk of something drastically changing. Maybe de Ligt is the exception rather than the rule considering he does seem to truly enjoy life in Turin and is now in the third year of the five-year contract he first agreed to when he signed for Juventus in the summer of 2019. And with Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci not getting any younger and now both in their mid-30s, we’re just getting that much closer to de Ligt being the clear-cut leader and true centerpiece of the Juventus defense.