Gabriele Marcotti analizza il passato di Van Gaal, attuale allenatore dellOlanda e prossimo dello United. Van Gaals past offers little insight into Uniteds future People change. That’s the thing to remember. Yet we like to imagine them fixed in time. Because first impressions last forever. To some of us, Louis van Gaal, two decades after orchestrating the penultimate Champions League success by a team outside Europe’s elite leagues, is still the mad genius. The savant who conjured up an improbable 3-diamond-3 scheme populated with teenagers and two golden oldies and ended AC Milan’s European dynasty (at least for a few years). To others, hes the hopped-up, red-faced whirlwind who could not control his emotions. If he looked ridiculous -- and stuff like this, make no mistake about it, is ridiculous -- it was in a cool way. Like Albert Einstein’s hair. The romantic inside you wants to believe that this was -- and is -- the van Gaal who will now manage Manchester United, and that van Gaal fits Old Trafford to a tee, possibly because we only saw the good bits. The success. And the red-faced rants, if anything, remind us of you-know-who. That’s all many knew about him in 1996. But people change. For better and, sometimes, worse. And the more you know about someone, the more they come into focus. The more you see the warts as well as the beauty spots. The thing about van Gaal is that you can take his career and spin it one way or another to make him seem like an obvious, no-brainer appointment or, equally, as a foolish gamble destined to crash and burn. Which shall we do first? Soaring highs or crushing lows? Van Gaal was an apprentice to Leo Beenhakker for three seasons at Ajax before replacing him and leading the club for another six years. That’s good. He was a student learning from a master; he can -- hopefully -- be the Jedi grooming the Padawan who will one day take over at Old Trafford. Better still is what he actually achieved at Ajax. Six seasons as number one yielded three Eredivisie titles, two second places and a third, plus a UEFA Cup and two Champions League finals: one victorious against Milan, one that saw them lose to Juventus on penalty kicks. Just as important, he showed courage and foresight in taking youngsters like Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf and Patrick Kluivert and giving them their debuts. During his first stint at Barcelona, he won titles in his first two seasons and finished second in the third, while also winning the Copa del Rey and taking them to the semifinal of the Champions League. It was often a bumpy ride -- more on that later -- but they played some sparkling football and, when you consider that during his three seasons, Real Madrid twice won the Champions League, while Mallorca and Valencia reached European finals, you see just how much competition he faced. He also did what big-time managers are usually too scared to do. He went to a smaller club -- AZ Alkmaar, where he ended his playing career and got his first job as an assistant -- and tested himself. When he arrived, AZ hadn’t won anything since 1982 and played in a stadium with a capacity of 8,390. He finished second and third in his first two seasons and, in his fourth, won the league title, at one point going on a 28-game undefeated run that included 24 wins. Bayern Munich called him to rebuild the club after the nightmare of the Jurgen Klinsmann campaign, and all he did was bring them to the brink of a historic treble: winning the Bundesliga, German Cup and falling only to Jose Mourinho’s Inter in the Champions League final. He also showed faith in two homegrown 20-year-old kids -- Thomas Mueller and Holger Badstuber -- making them regulars and helping them become German internationals. And he had the foresight to turn Bastian Schweinsteiger into a central midfielder. And, in his most recent gig as coach of Holland, he cruised through qualifying, winning nine and drawing one, while averaging nearly three-and-a-half goals a game. And no, it wasn’t in a total cream-puff group, either; they beat the likes of Turkey and Romania home and away by an aggregate of 12-1. That’s the good news. The lows? Well, he didn’t exactly start his coaching career on the right foot. He began as an assistant at AZ, but was sacked after a season following a player revolt. After his first jaunt at the Camp Nou, he took over as Holland manager. This was a team that had only lost in the semifinals (and on penalties) in Euro 2000 and the 1998 World Cup. Yet they somehow contrived to finish third in their qualification group for the 2002 World Cup behind Portugal and the Republic of Ireland. Van Gaal returned to Barcelona in the summer of 2002. He took over a side that had finished a disappointing fourth the previous year, but had nonetheless reached the Champions League semifinals. It still featured the likes of Kluivert, Frank de Boer, Phillip Cocu, Carles Puyol, Xavi, Thiago Motta, Javier Saviola and Marc Overmars, and Juan Roman Riquelme had just been signed with much fanfare. The year turned into a disaster. He was sacked at the end of January, with the team -- which had only won six of 19 games -- stuck in 12th place, three points above the relegation zone. After a sabbatical, he went back to Ajax in the guise of technical director, but fell out badly with the manager, Ronald Koeman, and walked out. Three of his four years as manager of AZ were a success, of course. The other? In 2007-08 he spent $20 million -- a fortune by Eredivisie standards -- and finished 11th. Likewise, van Gaals time at Bayern began exceptionally well and ended in flames. On March 7, 2011, after a 3-1 loss to Hannover left the club in fifth place, Bayern announced he would not return the following season. A month later, he got the sack; things had become so bad they were better off without him. That year, they also managed to squander a 3-1 aggregate lead in the final half-hour of a Champions League round-of-16 clash against Inter and were duly eliminated. If you really want to nitpick, even his highs come with caveats, particularly in Europe. Sure, he did win two La Liga titles in his first two years at Barcelona, but he was also bounced out of the Champions League in the group stage in both seasons. The year he reached the final with Bayern, he lost to Bordeaux home and away and only advanced because Juventus somehow imploded at home in the final group game. And this is just his record. That’s without going into the other imponderable: his personality. Folks seem to either adore him or loathe him. At Barcelona, even when things were going well during the first stint, he engaged the local press in daily news conference battles. He rowed incessantly with Rivaldo, who happened to be the best player in the world at the time. When he came back, he infuriated club bosses by deciding he didnt like Riquelme, their star signing, and turned him into a despondent, gloomy-faced sub. He blamed his Holland players for not working hard enough, and made sure everybody got the message in a 45-minute resignation speech on live television. His coexistence with Koeman at Ajax soon became impossible. At AZ he told his top goal scorer, Danny Koevermans (not a superstar by any stretch, but nevertheless a guy who had scored 22 in 25 starts the previous season) that he was no longer needed and promptly shipped him to PSV, where he immediately won the title. At Bayern, the list of people he fell out with is too long to mention, but includes Luca Toni -- who had scored 56 goals over the previous two seasons -- and Lucio, who famously said “Nobody ever treated me as badly as van Gaal did,” and then went on to excel in Inter’s treble-winning season the following year. The stock explanation -- and frankly, it’s plausible -- is that like most geniuses, like most people who do things differently, van Gaal’s social skills aren’t quite what they might be. Football has a long history of tactical geniuses who saw the game in truly innovative ways and yet, or maybe as a result, carried certain personality quirks. From Marcelo Bielsa (there’s a reason they call him “El Loco”) to Arrigo Sacchi (who has now mellowed but was often a nervous wreck in his managerial days) to Zdenek Zeman (for whom chain-smoking and monosyllabic answers are a way of life), when you move into their sphere you’re often made aware of the fact that you’re just visiting, if not intruding. For those to whom van Gaal can relate, his personality only adds to his message. Edwin van der Sar called him the best coach he ever had, and he worked with Carlo Ancelotti and Guus Hiddink, as well as that man from Govan. And it’s indicative that when van Gaal tendered his resignation after AZ’s awful 2007-08 season, the players persuaded him to stay. And he responded by leading them to the title. But, I refer you to the start of this column. People change. People learn, people grow. When van Gaal met a group of English football writers earlier this season, he was all sweetness, light and self-effacement. Age can bring wisdom and diplomacy. And as long as it doesn’t dull your edge as well, it can make you better at what you do. So he’s a roll of the dice, rather than a sure thing. But is he right for United? The 1996 version? Yes. The 2002, 2003 and 2011 ones? Probably not. The others? Depends on the circumstance. This one? We won’t know, but we’ll find out. When van Gaal came to London earlier this year, I asked one senior football executive whether he really could get a job in England or whether the way Bayern blew up in his face had tarnished him for life. “Come on,” he said. “Van Gaal is a genius. If you want to aim high, if you want to be the best, you need to challenge yourself. And that’s what he does. It’s not easy with him, nor should it be. And besides, at Bayern he fell out with [Uli] Hoeness. He’s not the first to do that and he won’t be the last. He just didn’t do well in an environment where he was at a new club in a foreign country with lots of former players speaking out and iconic senior club legends above him and in the background.” Iconic senior club legends in the background? Good thing there’s nobody who fits that bill at Old Trafford (espnfc/blog/_/name/espnfcunited/id/14540?cc=5739)
Posted on: Thu, 22 May 2014 08:00:00 +0000
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