Louis van Gaal continues to hit out at his former club, Manchester United. Obviously, the man nicknamed the Iron Tulip, who led the club from 2014-2016 has a serious axe to grind with Old Trafford, as he remains bitter about the manner in which he was dismissed.
On the same weekend that he won his first and only trophy with the club, the 2016 FA Cup, he was sacked by the club and replaced by Jose Mourinho. Additionally, for many of the preceding months it was the worst kept secret in football than Mourinho was set to replace Van Gaal.
In December, Van Gaal said the United of Mourinho are “far more boring” (dullness and tedium were charges often leveled against his Red Devils teams) than his sides. He also said that he would not mind coming back to coaching, in order to exact revenge on United. Now, he says that United were “mean” and “low” as they treated him “terrible” in the way that they terminated his employment.
He also said that Barcelona handled parting ways with him in a much better manner.
“The way Manchester United have treated me was terrible,” LVG is quoted in De Volkskrant (h/t Manchester Evening News). “They have been mean and low. In contrast, the way president [Joesp Lluis] Nunez of Barcelona treated me was fantastic.
“That proves that the world of football is not full of false people. There are also straight and warm people among those people. The former players of United started to have a go, saying that I was giving the fans boring football,” he added.
Van Gaal was still not done laying into his former employer, a club that ironically brought in another manager with a reputation for being defensive minded first as his successor.
“That struck me. It was directed, organized,” Van Gaal added.
“After a while, I started to think I’m losing my authority this way towards the players. So I had to make concessions in my approach of the players. That was tough, because I’ve always had my own way of coaching.”
The current United side is fourth in the league in scoring, behind only Manchester City, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur, with whom they have a game in hand. Currently second in the league table, they will kick off against relegation fodder Stoke City shortly.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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