The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, Episode 102: Matthijs de Ligt speaks, people freak out

We’ve officially reached the offseason, one where we expect Juventus to be rather busy as the club tries to reconstruct a roster that is in desperate need of some upgrading.

What does that mean?

It’s the time for the Italian press to freak out about things.

The latest comes courtesy of what Matthijs de Ligt said during a press availability over the weekend while he is on international duty with the Netherlands. De Ligt, being the good young man that he is, answered a question with honesty and just about the same amount of clarity as he usually does when he was asked about the season he just had at Juventus.

Those quotes, which have fallen pretty much in line with what the 22-year-old Dutchman has pretty much always said about his time at Juventus, got a little ... twisted by some Italian outlets, causing there to be the kind of reaction that you might expect when a pretty straightforward quote in a different language gets to the Italian press.

Luckily for us at The Old Lady Speaks Podcast, we have somebody on the crew who speaks Dutch. And we used him to properly translate those quotes and provide proper context.

See? We’re here to help, folks.

On this week’s episode of The Old Lady Speaks, we discuss:

• Takeaways from the week that ... oh, wait. There’s no games for the next couple of months.
• To actual news things! Or maybe something that might not be news?
• Getting down to the bottom of what Matthijs de Ligt said while being interviewed after a Dutch national team training session. Thankfully, we got a loyal Dutchman to help us properly translate what de Ligt actually said, not go all crazy like the Italian media did.
• Expanding on the de Ligt quotes — do they mean much of anything or does some of the panic to come as a result of it seem unwarranted?
• A debate after the de Ligt talk: If Juventus had to choose to sign only one of the two Udinese fullbacks they’ve been linked to over the last couple of weeks, who should it be, Destiny Udogie or Nahuel Molina?
• Twitter questions — including what should Juventus’ tactical setup be with Federico Chiesa and Dusan Vlahovic, and what Juventus should do with de Ligt and the center of the defense overall this summer?

You can listen to Episode 102 of The Old Lady Speaks here:

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