Reports: Juventus, Bayern Munich agree to €80M deal for Matthijs de Ligt

For the better part of the last two weeks, it’s been widely reported that Matthijs de Ligt wanted a move to Bayern Munich. Over that same time span, it’s been widely reported that Bayern wanted to close a deal for the young Dutchman before they head to the United States for a few friendlies.

Well, as we got close to midnight in Italy on Sunday night, the deal for de Ligt was closed.

According to just about everybody in the Italian media over the last hour or so, Juventus and Bayern Munich have agreed to terms on a deal that will see the 22-year-old Dutchman trade in black and white stripes for a lot more red. How much it is worth in total depends on who you read, with Sky Italia’s Gianluca Di Marzio and Fabrizio Romano saying it’s €70 million plus another €10 million in add-ons, while Goal Italia’s Romeo Agresti reporting “the operation is worth more than €80 million.”

Either way, Juve’s got a lot of money coming their way and now the question becomes how they are going to spend it and how they are going to go about trying to replace de Ligt this summer because nobody wants to envision a scenario of Daniele Rugani getting heavy minutes.

Ever since rumors started to truly become well known from reliable sources that Juventus were entertaining selling de Ligt this summer, this seemed like the most likely outcome. Maybe not selling him to Bayern Munich based on who was reportedly first in the race to secure his services — Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United — but this developed into the summer in which the partnership between de Ligt and Juventus came to an end.

It’s clear that de Ligt wants to compete for titles and Bayern will provide him that, no matter how far above the rest of the competition that his new club is in the Bundesliga. And Juventus, no matter who they bring in to replace de Ligt, is probably still behind the two Milan clubs in terms of competing for the Scudetto. So you’ve got the two clubs in different kinds of positions making a deal, and de Ligt clearly wanted to join the club that can be more competitive on multiple fronts. (We don’t know how much Juve’s summer additions will help until they actually play a competitive game or two next month, folks.)

So now with the de Ligt transfer out of the way, it’s all about who’s going to replace him. It’s unfortunate that Juve finished this business last than a week before its big tour in the United States where they will play three friendlies in a little over a week, but them’s the breaks.