Football careers are built on patterns. For Matthijs de Ligt, there is only one that never changes.
With Ruben Amorim’s dismissal at Manchester United, the Dutch defender will begin yet another season under a new head coach. Remarkably, it has been that way for every single year of his professional career.
Since making his senior debut at Ajax in 2016, De Ligt has never started a season with the same manager he finished the previous one with. Not once. Across Ajax, Juventus, Bayern Munich and now Manchester United, continuity has followed everyone except him.
The sequence reads like a tour of modern European football. Peter Bosz gave way to Marcel Keizer. Keizer to Erik ten Hag. At Juventus, Maurizio Sarri was followed by Andrea Pirlo, then Max Allegri. Bayern Munich brought Julian Nagelsmann, then Thomas Tuchel. At Old Trafford, Ten Hag returned, only to be replaced by Amorim, who has now also departed.
Ten seasons. Ten head coaches.
What makes the streak compelling is not its oddity but its contradiction. De Ligt has built a reputation as a defender who thrives on structure, organisation and leadership. He was Ajax captain at 19, trusted at Juventus in his early twenties, and became a fixture at Bayern despite constant upheaval around him.
While managers came and went, De Ligt adapted. Defensive lines changed. Build-up structures evolved. High presses became mid-blocks, then something else entirely. He remained, recalibrating each time, rarely the problem, often the solution.
There is no suggestion that De Ligt causes instability. If anything, his career underlines how little control players truly have over the revolving doors above them. Football moves quickly, particularly at elite clubs where patience is scarce and pressure is permanent.
Still, it is impossible not to notice the symmetry. Each July brings a new tactical language, a fresh set of principles, another “project” to buy into. For De Ligt, the preseason routine includes learning names as much as systems.
Now Manchester United begin another reset, and De Ligt prepares, once more, to start again. New instructions. New expectations. Same professionalism.
In a sport obsessed with stability, Matthijs de Ligt has quietly become the embodiment of something else entirely.
Adaptability.
