Louis van Gaal : the biography

269 Pages·2014·1.41 MB·English

by  Gaal

CONTENTS
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
March to the Beat of a Different Drum
Young Louis, the Football Player
Highs and Lows at Sparta and AZ
Ajax and the ‘Dutch School’
The ‘Iron Tulip’
Golden Years in Amsterdam
Van Gaal and God
Barcelona
Bondscoach
At Barcelona and Ajax again
Van Gaal and the Media
AZ Reprise
The Louis van Gaal Menu
At Bayern Munich at Last
Catastroph Gaal, The Tulip General, Glucks Gaal
Champions League
Aloysius Paulus Maria van Gaal vs. José Mário dos Santos Félix
Mourinho
The van Gaal Revolution and the 2010 World Cup
Auf Wiedersehen …
Velvet Revolution or Civil War?
The Second Coming
Van Gaal 2.0
The Crowning Jewel – Manchester United
Louis van Gaal – Curriculum Vitae
Copyright
ABOUT THE BOOK
So who is Louis Van Gaal? An inflexible ex-PE teacher who only knows
how to act like a dictator or a footballing visionary that has made him
one of the greatest ever European managers?
Wherever he has gone, Van Gaal has been accused of being a
domineering disciplinarian and a control freak. He is certainly, by his
own admission, a man who leaves nothing to chance. A disciple in the
1970s of Rinus Michels’ Total Football philosophy, he is a fascinating
contradiction – an ultra-individualist utterly devoted to the collective
effort. He believes in the team over the individual, in always having a
plan and a team prepared to follow that plan. Van Gaal led the young
Ajax team he moulded to Champions League glory in 1995, went on to
win titles across Europe with Barcelona, AZ Alkmaar and Bayern Munich
and is currently in his second stint as national coach of Holland. It is a
career that has never been short on colour and drama – from fallouts
with players to rants at the media wherever he has managed.
Dutch football commentator Maarten Meijer’s has written the definitive
biography of Van Gaal – both the man and his methods. It offers the best
psychological insight so far – from his earliest roots to his greatest
triumphs – into the man given the task of returning the glory days to
Manchester United.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maarten Meijer spent his childhood years in the small town of Zeist in the
Netherlands. After completing his school education, he travelled
extensively, from Ireland to Turkey, from Finland to Spain. When
Europe became a little small, he sailed a yacht across the Atlantic Ocean
to the Americas. After touring the Caribbean islands, he landed in the
USA. He enrolled at the State University of New York, receiving a
bachelor’s degree in science and a master’s degree in philosophy. In
1982, he met his wife Myra, a New York City native.
In 1991, a taste for new adventure drove the family, which by then
included a daughter and a son, to Russia. Maarten taught philosophy in
Moscow, and again travelled widely, from Riga and the Crimea in the
west to Lake Baikal and Vladivostok in the east. He received his PhD in
Russian literature from Moscow State University, writing a dissertation
on an old favourite, Leo Tolstoy. In Russia the family befriended
Russian Koreans and Korean natives and developed a taste for kimchi
and Korean hospitality.
This ultimately inspired a move to Korea in 2000. Maarten taught English
at a Seoul university for several years. He is fluent in English, German,
Russian, Dutch, and knows survival-French and Korean. He is the author
o f What’s So Good about Korea, Maarten? (Korea, 2005), Guus
Hiddink – Going Dutch (Australia, 2006), Dick Advocaat – de grote
droom van de Kleine Generaal (Netherlands, 2009), Education War
(Korea, 2009) and Guus Hiddink – portret van een supercoach
(Netherlands, 2010). From March 2006 he has taught philosophy and
ethics at a private international school in the Korean mountains, while
continuing his activities as an author, a football commentator and a social
critic.
Maarten and Myra have a daughter and three sons. The second son was
born in Moscow, the third in Seoul.

MARCH TO THE BEAT OF A DIFFERENT DRUM
‘I am a very consistent, honest and direct person. And sometimes that
strikes people as being hard.’
Louis van Gaal
The story goes that the Dutch club SC Telstar asked the KNVB (the
Dutch FA) if its team could start playing on a blue pitch. The KNVB
turned to FIFA to settle this bewildering question. Why blue, when
everyone has been so happy, for so long, with playing on a green field?
It would be unfair to lay the blame for causing such confusion in the
sacred halls of the highest football authorities at the feet of Louis van
Gaal, but one cannot help but wonder if, somehow, this persistent
troublemaker is not the engine generating such unorthodox ideas. Van
Gaal has been proven to champion innovations that others would hesitate
to endorse. Although he agreed that nothing beats the smell of freshly
sprayed grass pitches in the early morning sun, he has also embraced
artificial turf: ‘Then every ground in the world would be the same, which
I prefer over the extreme differences in quality of grass pitches.’ The
current match schedule indeed leaves little time for a pitch to recover,
which can be detrimental to the quality of the football on display. The
development of artificial turf has reached its ‘third generation’ which
constitutes a mix of synthetics and grass. Most professional teams have at
least one training ground equipped with it.
After falling from the managerial heights of his golden 1990s, perhaps
van Gaal, like all wise men, has realised that the highs and the lows in
football are married to each other. His rehabilitation began at AZ
Alkmaar and was completed at Bayern Munich in 2010. He is never one
to rest on his laurels though, and football has long been on the alert for
relentless van Gaal activity – be it verbal, tactical or ideological. Long
before the start of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, for example, van
Gaal was already offering his forthright opinions: ‘Little boys all over the
world saw that one of the biggest stars of today’s football cheated.
[Thierry] Henry used his hands to shoot France to the World Cup. Over
the last few decades, football as a sport is enormously on the rise. You
can tell at all levels: the money stream, the number of viewers, the
development of nations like Australia and the USA, which normally have
lots of other sports to engage in. We need to embrace that global interest.
The World Cup is the platform for all that is football. There’s lots at
stake, so I say, let’s use technology where we can.’
On the eve of Bayern Munich’s 2010 Champions League last-16 clash
with Fiorentina, van Gaal suggested making radical changes to football
rules. In an article entitled ‘Van Gaal’s Revolution’ in the German
magazine Kicker, the Bayern boss revealed his vision for the football of
the future. He argued that deciding a game through penalties was too
random: ‘Penalties are a lottery. I’m for the gladiatorial game! If extra
time is required following a draw, it should consist of two 15-minute
periods, with each team losing a man every 5 minutes. After 95 minutes
10 would play against 10, after 100 minutes 9 on 9. From the 115th
minute it would only be 6 on 6. Then only the best team would secure
the win – and not just a single player through a penalty. If there is still no
result after 120 minutes, a golden goal would decide the game.’
Computer technology, he argued, should decide important situations:
‘The speed of the game has increased dramatically in the last 10 years,
and viewing figures have grown. We must protect this interest. It is
important that things are no longer decided by people. I want only
technology to decide. Technology is impartial and objective.’ Van Gaal
would like an electronic chip to be placed in the ball to register whether
or not it crossed the line. That FIFA earlier had rejected this technical
innovation was an incomprehensible decision for van Gaal: ‘It is
nonsense that we don’t use that.’ He also proposed to abolish the throw-
in: ‘A throw-in should be a positive thing for a team, but with more than
half of the throw-ins the ball ends up with the opponent. It’s easy to
defend a thrown ball. And it’s a bit weird too. It’s football, so why would
we suddenly use our hands for a throw-in? It has to be a “kick-in”. That
is better because then the defending team won’t simply kick the ball out.
With a “kick-in” we can change the game – it is also more attractive.’
Furthermore, according to van Gaal, a game needs two referees and a
TV official instead of linesmen: ‘The job of linesmen is to determine
who gets the throw-in and when a player is offside. They also tend to put
their flag up when they spot a foul, but 9 out of 10 times they wait for the
referee’s whistle until they start flagging. In today’s football, offside is
extremely hard to determine. The game is quicker now and to be able to
view the moment a ball is played and to check at the same time where the
forwards are is basically an impossibility. No one can see those moments
at the same time. We need two referees, as in basketball or ice hockey,
one in each half, positioned diagonally. They would then be directly by
the ball and be able to see the backs of the players. They would be joined
by a third referee, who would watch the game on computer. They would
all have those headsets with mikes. It doesn’t matter where the computer
expert would sit, whether at the edge of the field or up in the stands. I
believe we should use as much technology as possible. Technology is
always neutral and doesn’t make the mistakes human beings make.’
Van Gaal realised that his ideas might be chucked straight into the
rubbish bin at the FIFA offices: ‘I know. That’s a bunch of old men up
there. They don’t seem to care about the game; they care about keeping
their jobs and offices and expense budgets. This is the biggest sport in
the world and it’s governed by the most conservative people, who are
willing to gamble the future of our sport for personal reasons. But they
can’t stop me from thinking.’ That is one thing that is certain. And
neither can they stop van Gaal from speaking his mind.
Following his appointment as Dutch national coach in 2012, Louis van
Gaal went on to select six different goalkeepers. Every game it seemed to
be a toss-up who would be in goal. Maarten Stekelenburg, Tim Krul,
Michel Vorm, Kenneth Vermeer, Jasper Cillessen and Jeroen Zoet were
all selected, some of them making their international début, all of them
failing at times. There was no clearly designated first keeper. The battle
was open, as for most other positions. Under van Gaal the keeper lost his
protected status in the team: even someone who is a reserve at his club –
Cillessen – got playing time. Stekelenburg confessed that he had
difficulty with van Gaal’s management, after he had been dropped at the
first qualification game. The Fulham keeper had for many years been the
undisputed first choice. But suddenly he found himself on the bench,
with Tim Krul preferred. Michel Vorm commented, ‘No, I don’t know of
any example of a club or country where it works this way. In Spain, Iker
Casillas always was first choice, even when he did not play at Real. This
is a different, more unconventional approach.’
When selecting the goalie, van Gaal is assisted by Frans Hoek, his
goalkeeper coach, who also worked with him at Barcelona. Hoek is
known to be obsessed with his trade; he endlessly analyses and
scrutinises new training methods. Hoek has a peculiar view on the art of
stopping the ball, often at odds with the accepted norms. Van Gaal had
met his match.
Van Gaal set about reducing the team’s age, paying particular attention
to the back four, where he favoured Daryl Janmaat, Stefan de Vrij,
Bruno Martins Indi and Jetro Willems, with an average age of 21. He also
handed PSV prodigy Adam Maher an international début. On the
rationale for his selection procedure van Gaal said, ‘When there isn’t any
stimulation by a young group that stirs things up, you get stuck. That is
why I am always attracted to young players, who automatically provide
such stimulation. The old players have seen it all. It kills a group if you
have too much of that. I continually play players who are most fit; never
those who are just big names. Names matter to the media, but not to me.
The previous federation coach Louis van Gaal did give credit to, and had
faith in, recognised players. That was something I shouldn’t have done.
Now I do exactly the opposite, and that works quite well. It also keeps
everybody on their toes. At this time too, though, there are a few key
players who – if they are playing with their club – in principle will
always be selected. Because they perform at a level above the team’s
average.’
What then is the secret recipe behind good coaching? The masterful
tactical plan? The exhilarating pre-game motivational speech? Journalists
and coaches are often on common ground when it comes to looking for