Referee Louis van Gaal

He’s enjoying it a bit, he’s always enjoyed it, being the denim football guy, the one he never asked for. He does not ask, he never asked, he always limited himself to doing, especially undoing, without having to explain and undo what he was doing. that of Louis van Gaal It is a soliloquy that has been going on for over thirty years. You are a poetic drama about football, his idea of ​​football, and perhaps his idea of ​​himself. A huge idea, a portrait of a knight errant, Don Quixote from Holland: Windmills are very Dutch.

He didn’t explain or ask this time either. The Dutch national team assumed a crisis in results and self-esteem after the failure of Frank de Boer in the European Championships, Then Italy won it. He told the players that he was responsible and that they should do what he told them, and that any character would be banned. In short: either do as I say or be out. Follow. Hardly anyone takes the Dutch seriously at this World Cup in Qatar. He played reaching the semi-finals against Argentina. Certainly Senegal, Ecuador, Qatar (in the group) and the United States were not insurmountable opponents, yet things have gone bad for the other national teams and the reason always lies with the winner.

It is pure in its own way. Louis van Gaal, the person who never made up with anyone. Already on his way to becoming a coach he was saying about it “totaalvoetbal” – The “Orange” football revolution was started in the mid-1960s by Rinus Michels – It was the past that reeked of rottenness: in order to have a future, it was necessary to forget it. That was 1987. It took some time to destroy the past. First he updated it by disassembling it. And he won a lot: Dutch championships and cups, and above all the Champions League (and the UEFA Cup) with Ajax.

The last successful version of the Lancers in Europe, this Ajax version was proof that you can make even fans happy. Destroy everything they believed in and valued. Provided you have talented players willing to do anything to stand up for a cause, the cause of a man just over forty who was already preaching his beliefs in the manner of those charismatic holy men who never question themselves but follow each other in blind faith.

A confidence imposed by a man so rough and angular, bordering on hatred, with the press and insiders, that he is able to enter into symbiosis with his players. Winston Bogard, Ajax defender, said in 2019: “We were one body and one head: he. We were very strong because we knew we could trust each other blindly: everything was written, we just had to respect the result.” It wasn’t always like that, but none of that mattered to Van Gaal.

The coach was, is, a guy who doesn’t want to be understood, he just wants to follow. And in silence. He is a socialist dictator, convinced that there is nothing outside the group and that there is no group without discipline. for him. built on his victories – won wherever he went; ajax, BarcelonaAZ Alkmaar, Bayern Munich, Manchester United, even if it’s just one FA Cup – putting defensive solidity at the heart of everything in a country that from the 1960s onwards always thought about attack. As he carried out this historical and probable reversal, he advocated that attack and defense were outmoded concepts and that in football, there was no defense and attack, but in football, there was no defense and attack, but control of space. Then trade the ball. It is Van Gaal’s fault if there is any talk of space in European football. He denied the whole and embraced the particular, renounced freedom and replaced it with totalitarian discipline, and eliminated the individual by making himself a puppeteer. Now he lacks the last step: to completely erase the Dutch football fad and impose his rule once and for all by winning the World Cup. Nobody believes it. He might answer: “You think it is impossible because you are simple minds. I see beyond my nose.” He already said that. That was 1991.