There are few sights in football that set the pulse racing. Some things in the beautiful game just give off an aura. Like Barcelona out-passing their opposition, some sights are so majestic simply because of the team doing it. The yellow shirts of Brazil exude the same sense of excitement and expectation. And the orange strip of Holland isn’t far behind. The days of Cruyff, Kroll and Neeskens, and the era of Gullit, Van Basten and Rijkaard brought Holland to the table of footballing powers. And here they are on the brink of elimination from a European Championships before the tournament has even started. Some even said it would be easier to get to France 2016 than to get into a local polytechnic.
All the more baffling is that, just over a year ago, the Netherlands were only a couple of penalty kicks away from a World Cup final.
Then Louis van Gaal left his post at the Dutch national team to take over at Manchester United. It’s not that Van Gaal was the only thing standing between elimination in the qualifiers and a World Cup semi final, though. Surely Robin van Persie, Arjen Robben and their mates were good enough to see off Iceland and Latvia by themselves.
But there is an accusation that all is not well at the places Van Gaal leaves.
Hristo Stoichkov, the most recognisable Bulgarian footballer of all-time, and one of the 90s’ top marksmen recently publicised his distaste for the Manchester United boss, who had frozen him out of Barcelona when he took over at the Catalan club, saying that Van Gaal “destroyed Barcelona” and would have “ruin[ed] Pedro”.
Stoichkov continues his personal attack on Van Gaal by saying that Van Gaal approached the Bulgarian’s wife and asked ‘how it was possible’ that she married someone like the legendary star.
Let’s not read too much into the musings of a disgruntled former player. After all, he has an axe to grind and publicly rinsing Van Gaal was probably high on the former Barcelona striker’s agenda when he gave that interview. But what is interesting is what happened next.
Pedro did shun Manchester United in the end, and moved to Chelsea. But only last week did Pedro give an interview stating that Van Gaal’s treatment of Victor Valdes – a long-time team-mate and friend of Pedro – had influenced his decision to join Chelsea.
It’s too easy to simply say that Van Gaal is a destroyer who ruins players and ruins teams. For one thing, it’s not really true. After Van Gaal left Bayern Munich they had won the treble within three years, and within three years of his departure at Barcelona the Catalans had won the Champions League. In fact, in the years after Van Gaal left Barcelona, perhaps the team of a generation emerged at the Nou Camp: players like Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Lionel Messi and, yes indeed, Victor Valdes and Pedro were integrated into the team.
As with seemingly everything to do with Louis van Gaal, it’s more about philosophy than anything else. An amusing story from one of Serie A’s greatest strikers, Luca Toni, hit on this point – perhaps unwittingly.
Toni says that Van Gaal wanted to demonstrate that he had the ‘balls’ to drop any player, and proceeded to illustrate his point by dropping his trousers in front of his team. The Italian goal-machine then went on to say how Van Gaal “treats his players like interchangeable objects”.
And that’s exactly the point. Anyone who thinks that Van Gaal’s team is anything other than a machine put together using various different parts will have a tough time getting it to work. It’s like getting into a car and not knowing how to drive it.
Holland have fallen dramatically. Not because Louis van Gaal destroyed them, but because Danny Blind – a man who knows Van Gaal well enough to have no excuses, by the way – failed to see what Van Gaal was doing with his team. Frank Rijkaard and Pep Guardiola knew and Jupp Heynckes knew, too.
And right there is the warning for Manchester United – another wonderful footballing dynasty. The next manager needs to understand Van Gaal. If he does, the riches of Bayern and Barca could await. If not, they could sink like Holland.
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