As a young coach, Louis van Gaal was an idealist, who surprised the football world by winning the Champions League with a very attacking Ajax. Almost thirty years later, the 71-year-old national coach proves at the World Cup that he has become a realist. The evolution of coach Van Gaal in four parts.
Van Gaal zucht even als hij donderdag op de persconferentie voor het kwartfinaleduel met Argentinië de vraagt krijgt wanneer hij als coach gelukkiger was: toen hij in zijn eerste jaren bij Ajax naar dominant en aantrekkelijk voetbal keek of nu hij met het Nederlands elftal omschakelvoetbal speelt?
“Ik krijg iedere keer dezelfde vraag van je”, zegt Van Gaal tegen de Nederlandse journalist. “Jij begrijpt niet dat het voetbal evolueert en dat het nu veel moeilijker is om zo aanvallend te spelen als Ajax deed in de jaren negentig.”
Het is het begin van een antwoord van drie minuten, waarin de bondscoach op Van Gaaliaanse wijze zijn mening geeft. Hij doceert. Hij analyseert. Hij wijst terecht. En hij haalt zijn gelijk.
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“When I opted for a more defensive system with the Orange at the 2014 World Cup, I received a lot of criticism. But now half the world plays like this. Defending compactly is simply easier than attacking,” says the national coach. “Football is no longer played as it was in, say, 1974 or 1998. Then it was still an open game. Now that is no longer the case.”
As a coach, he had to go along with that trend, says Van Gaal. And so his vision – as he likes to call it – has changed in his 36 years as a trainer with the evolution in football.
Trainerscarrière Louis van Gaal
- 1991-1997: Ajax
- 1998-2000: FC Barcelona
- 2000-2002: Oranje
- 2002-2003: FC Barcelona
- 2005-2009: AZ
- 2009-2011: Bayern München
- 2012-2014: Oranje
- 2014-2016: Manchester United
- 2021-heden: Oranje
“Was imbued with the Ajax DNA and the idea that you always have to attack”
On April 19, 1995, Bayern Munich chairman Franz Beckenbauer greatly admires the show he has just seen in the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam. “Ajax was like a Porsche and we were an ugly duckling,” says the German football legend.
Ajax whirls in the semi-finals of the Champions League to a 5-2 win over the German champions Bayern. The young team plays the way they like to see it in Amsterdam: offensively, on possession and with three strikers. “The 4-3-3 system was sacred,” Gerard van der Lem, Van Gaal’s assistant at the time, told the news agency earlier this week. ANP. “We were romantics, football was for the public.”
With classic wingers (Finidi George and Marc Overmars), a technically strong attack point in the striker (Nwankwo Kanu or Patrick Kluivert) and a much-scoring attacking midfielder (Jari Litmanen), Ajax won the Champions League in 1995. It is still the last time that a Dutch club has won the most important European prize.
The then 44-year-old Van Gaal has only been head coach for four years and knows no better than that the Dutch school is the best football philosophy. “At that time I was still very inexperienced and completely imbued with the Ajax DNA. With the idea that you always have to attack and that you have to do that with wingers,” Van Gaal said last week in Qatar at his press conference for the eighth-final match with the United States (3-1 win).
“But in the years since then I have increasingly evaluated the risks of that style of play. And as a result, my vision has gradually changed to less attacking and more emphasis on winning games.”
‘An important tipping point in the transition from idealist to realist’
Van Gaal has been manager of FC Barcelona for less than half a year when he is the victim of one of the most dramatic comebacks in the history of the Spanish league. The Catalan top club is on January 19, 1998, halfway through the second half, on a 3-0 lead in their own Camp Nou when things go completely wrong. Using the elusive star Claudio López, Valencia scores four goals in nineteen minutes, giving the visitors a 3-4 win.
“That match was a great learning moment for me,” says Van Gaal in an interview with the Catalan TV channel in 2019 TV3. “And it became an important tipping point in my vision in the transition from idealist to realist.”
How important is evident from the fact that Van Gaal has already mentioned the dramatic duel with Valencia several times in recent weeks in Qatar. “As a coach you have to ask yourself after such a match whether it is wise to just attack every time,” he told the US before the eighth finals. “You can also just kill a game and play it out quietly.”
Van Gaal did not suddenly become a completely different trainer in his first period at Barcelona. Under his leadership, the Catalans almost always played in a 4-3-3 system, which led to the Spanish title in 1998 and 1999. “But in Barcelona I started to think differently about football for the first time and to develop a new vision,” Van Gaal said on Thursday. “I’ve learned that you can’t always live up to it with Ajax’s offensive DNA.”
“I take into account the qualities of players, they must come into their own”
A month before the start of the 2014 World Cup, national coach Van Gaal confirmed at a press conference in Hoenderloo what had already been leaked a few days earlier: the Orange will play in a 5-3-2 system at the tournament in Brazil.
“With this system there is room for creativity in midfield, but the outsides are also occupied,” Van Gaal explains. “In this way we maintain the principles of the Dutch school. But I also take into account the qualities of my players, they must come into their own.”
It is swearing in the church, a Dutch team that does not use 4-3-3. The Volkskrant calls it ‘poldercataccio’. For Van Gaal, it is a logical consequence of the evolution he has gone through as a coach. Five years earlier, he led AZ to the club’s second national title by using a 4-4-2 system and a new way of applying pressure.
A more defensive style of play has also been successful at the World Cup in Brazil. Underdog Orange reaches the semi-finals, in which Argentina is too strong after penalties.
“If a national coach of the Dutch national team wanted to try a different system, he was already shot before he could start,” says former international Pierre van Hooijdonk. “There is no other country where the idea of football identity is so strict. Van Gaal deviated from it for the first time in 2014, because he thought that we did not have such a good selection of quality. And so it became more modern football.”
“Do also know that Ajax’s game in 1995 was more attractive than that of Orange now”
After his resignation from Manchester United in 2016, Van Gaal’s coaching career seems to be over. But when the KNVB knocks on his door for the third time after the failed European Championship in 2021 with the offer to become national coach, the Amsterdammer cannot say no. “Who else should do it?”, he wonders aloud at his presentation in Zeist.
Van Gaal emphasizes that he kept up with developments in the football world during his ‘retirement’. He has therefore also seen that more and more teams are using a system with wingbacks use, like the Orange in 2014. Although the internationals of the Dutch national team initially express their preference for 4-3-3, Van Gaal soon decides that 5-3-2 (or 1-3-4-3, as he calls it itself) again gives the best chance of World Cup success.
“I think it’s great that Louis had done nothing for five years and then came up with a super modern way of playing football,” says Van Hooijdonk, who has been analyzing the matches of Orange for years at the NOS. “I can name a list of coaches who only have one trick, who have had success with it and then always stick to it. Louis is no longer the youngest, but he has always remained open to innovations.”
Just like in 2014, there is now criticism of the Orange game, which is not sparkling. But it does yield results, resulting in a quarterfinal against Argentina on Friday.
“I also know that Ajax football in 1995 was more attractive than the football we now play with the Orange squad,” Van Gaal said last Tuesday. “But we are part of the current zeitgeist where football has evolved into compact defenses and playing on the counterattack. I was one of the first coaches to see it going in this direction. I just can’t be the same coach I was in my Ajax time.”
