MAY 29 — For Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal, winning the FA Cup was supposed to be a moment to savour. Three years after the legendary Alex Ferguson bade farewell to Old Trafford, the Red Devils finally lifted their first ever trophy of the post-Fergie era.
For van Gaal, especially, it was supposed to be vindication after several months of speculation that his job was on the chopping block. Here it was, proof that his “philosophy” was finally bearing fruit. And he did it “the United Way”, with a cadre of young Academy graduates in the first team squad, a collection of fresh talent that could perhaps one day match the peerless vintage of 1992.
And yet the moment was strangely poisoned. Even in the midst of victory celebrations, word got around that the club was already close to finalising a deal to replace van Gaal with Jose Mourinho, the “Special One” himself.
Several days after the FA cup victory, van Gaal found himself officially out of a job.
For Aloysius Paulus Maria Van Gaal, getting sacked was particularly cruel. After all, the club was still reeling from a disastrous title defence, when he took over in 2014. For a club that was used to winning titles and trophies, finding themselves at seventh place under David Moyes was unfamiliar, anxiety-inducing, and frightening.
And so Manchester United reached out to van Gaal, a proven coach at the highest levels of club and national football, someone who had a clear “philosophy” and would not be fazed by the challenge of managing a big club with a dressing room full of oversized egos.
Early days at the club were promising. Players of the calibre of Angel Di Maria, Daley Blind and Radamel Falcao were brought in. The dismal days of David Moyes were fast forgotten. Here was a manager of the highest pedigree, who would lead the club back to the halcyon days when United would win everything in sight.
But the smooth transition back to winning was nowhere to be seen. Games were being lost against lowly opposition. Formations were being tried, and changed, too soon and too often. As the games came and went, the restlessness among the fans occasionally erupted into rebellion: supporters of the club who were used to winning everything in sight, still not fully recovered from the shock of Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure, began to complain that Manchester United were not playing the way they were meant to play. The sense of adventure, the flair and the style, was just not there.
In some ways, this verdict on van Gaal was unfair. While Ferguson did win the league in his last season in charge, the team he bequeathed to Moyes was clearly running out of steam. Both Moyes and van Gaal discovered, when they took on the job respectively, that the work of reconstructing Manchester United was no walk in the park.
Furthermore, to van Gaal’s credit, his own predilection for promoting young talent dovetailed perfectly with Manchester United’s legacy of the “Busby Babes” and “Fergie’s Fledglings”. The likes of Marcus Rashford, Timothy Fosu-Mensah and Cameron Borthwick-Jackson have the potential to form the nucleus of a formidable United squad for many years to come.
Most importantly, he delivered what United fans craved, more than anything else: a fresh trophy.
But it was not enough.
And in hindsight, when the years of Louis van Gaal are considered with greater clarity in time to come, many will conclude that van Gaal would have gone on to at least another year in Old Trafford if Manchester United had won a Champions League spot; if the striking trio of Rashford, Lingard and Martial had gelled earlier in the season; and perhaps if a manager of the calibre of Mourinho was not so readily available.
Ultimately, at a club with the stature and heritage of Manchester United, expectations were always going to be high. Sadly, in an age where untold amounts of money swirls across the horizon and seeps into every crevice of the beautiful game, patience often wears thin too easily and too quickly. The financialisation of global football has led to a high-stakes game where managers are made into convenient scapegoats in the event of failure.
Like CEOs of listed multinational companies, the modern football manager has very little job security. There is always a Mourinho waiting in the wings, waiting for a van Gaal to stumble and fall.
Could van Gaal have done things differently? Could he have managed expectations downwards, given himself more time for his changes to bear fruit?
As Shakespeare put it so eloquently in Hamlet: “Our wills and fates do so contrary run / That our devices still are overthrown / Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.”
Van Gaal, with all his self-assurance and fearsome reputation, and his thoughts and his “philosophy”, could not deliver results quickly enough to satisfy the baying crowds of fans and supporters, or the demands of the club’s owners.
And in the brave new world of global football, with its combustible mix of rich billionaire owners, superstar footballers, billion-dollar TV and merchandising deals, perhaps this state of affairs — this perpetual pressure for results and trophies — may simply be the price that all managers of elite clubs have to pay for the right to play at the highest level of club football.
As the Malay proverb aptly puts it: kalau takut dilambung ombak, jangan berumah di tepi pantai. For as long as global football thrives in the cresting waves of money and global popularity, the likes of Louis van Gaal must simply accept the curse of high expectations that led to his appointment, and eventually to his own expeditious overthrow.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.
