Juventus defender to undergo shoulder surgery which will keep him out until October or November

Matthijs de Ligt served as his own news network following Juventus’ Champions League exit when it came to revealing that he will be undergoing shoulder surgery now that the 2019-20 season is over. Not that it was a huge surprise seeing as de Ligt has been dealing with said shoulder injury ever since November, and going under the knife seemed like the only logical end game.

The only thing we didn’t hear from de Ligt was how long this might keep him out.

Over the last two days, Tuttopsport (link via La Vecchia Signora), La Gazzetta dello Sport (link via La Vecchia Signora) and SportMediaset have all reported that missing piece of information. And, when it comes to how much time de Ligt will miss, they’ve been in unison saying that the big 20-year-old Dutchman will be out until late October or November after undergoing surgery to repair his separated shoulder.

In a “normal” offseason, seeing somebody miss a couple of months isn’t really that big of a deal. He would likely return toward the end of the preseason friendly schedule and then play a little bit of catch up in training.

But, as we know, this is far from a normal season. Mainly because it’s not really much of an offseason to begin with.

Juventus’ season came to a close on Aug. 7 against Lyon. by the time the month of August is over, the club’s players will already be going through the first few training sessions with brand new manager Andrea Pirlo. Essentially, they’ve got just a few short weeks to recharge their batteries and enjoy a little bit of vacation before ramping things up again and officially preparing for the 2020-21 season.

With the accelerated preseason starting just a few weeks before the 2020-21 campaign kicks off in mid-September, Juventus will be going through a huge acclimation process without one of their best players. Will Giorgio Chiellini be ready to go by then? If not, will Merih Demiral be ready for a heavy workload after being slowly worked back into the fold toward the end of the restart? Will Daniele Rugani even be a Juve player come the start of next season?

The benefit of de Ligt fighting through the pain in the second half of the season was that it helped ease the strain on a position group that had very little depth ever since January. And, as has been previously mentioned, it was likely why de Ligt didn’t get his shoulder operated on earlier because of everything going on.

But now we know that surgery is going to happen and, as has now been reported, when a general return date could be. We probably won’t see de Ligt in the first month or two of the season, but the good news out of all of this is that his shoulder will finally be completely healthy once again.