Matthijs de Ligt leaving Bayern Munich for Manchester United along with Noussair Mazraoui during the summer transfer window left a bitter taste in the mouths of the greater majority of Bayern fans. For De Ligt in particular, he genuinely seemed like he was going to go on to become one of the true leaders in the center of defense for the Rekordmeister.
Since he had joined Bayern from AFC Ajax, there had been a decent amount of shuffling, experimenting, and rotating between Julian Nagelsmann and Thomas Tuchel with regards to the preferred center-back pairing. Last season under Tuchel, though, De Ligt became one of the mainstays at center-back, most often alongside Eric Dier for most of the second half of the season after the winter transfer window.
For Bayern, there was an emphasis placed on trying to help alleviate the overall wage bill at the club during the transfer window, but Hiroki Ito’s injury in a preseason friendly has not done wonders for the optics of letting both De Ligt and Mazraoui go. De Ligt was a high earner at the club, but there were other players that could have been focused on to help lower the collective wage bill.
For De Ligt, there was a reunion with manager Erik ten Hag with his arrival at Manchester United. The center back played under the Dutch manager during his tenure with Ajak, but he recently admitted that it was not sole the reason he left Bayern this summer. “Erik ten was is not the only reason I joined Manchester United. We are talking about Manchester United here, one of the biggest clubs in the world. There is a lot of pressure because the fans are used to things from the past, now it is up to us,” he recently explained to Dutch outlet Vandaag Inside (as per CaughtOffside).
So far for United, De Ligt has made a total of three appearances for United in the Premier League, only one of which was a start. His prospects with the Dutch national team is also something to consider with his decision to move to United, as he barely played at the Euros for the Netherlands after Bayern’s season as a whole was well below par, even though he did not have a bad individual season, per se.
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