Manchester United Manager Louis van Gaal said during the last international break in early September that his current assistant Manager Ryan Giggs will be successor. He emphatically reiterated what he said to the club’s official site back in late April.
“I expect that he (Giggs) will be the next manager after I am gone,” Van Gaal told MUTV this past spring.
“Now I have the responsibility. He has tasks that he has to perform like the players. What he has to do, for me, he does it very well.”
Sir Alex Ferguson is also optimistic about the managerial career prospects of Ryan Giggs.
‘Ryan Giggs is eventually going to be a great manager,’ Ferguson wrote in his new book ‘Leading,’ which was released on September 22nd.
‘He has intelligence, presence and knowledge – but there was no chance that I would have ever asked him, or any other player, to consider being my successor while he was still fortunate enough to be playing.’
Ferguson said that he would have made Giggs part of his managerial staff when he was in charge, but couldn’t because Ryan Giggs extended his playing career so long.
‘There is every chance that he would have been my assistant in my final five years at Manchester United, alongside Mick Phelan.’
Ferguson also revealed in his book that he initially approached Pep Guardiola about being his successor before settling on David Moyes.
Today’s revelations take that a step further, indicating that Giggs could have been the current manager today, had he not played for so long. Speaking in a BBC documentary that airs Sunday, Ferguson said he would have liked a few years to mentor Ryan Giggs into his successor, but Giggs kept playing until late in life.
“If Ryan Giggs had retired six or seven years ago — say he’d retired at 35, quite likely I’d have made him my assistant, and quite likely he could have moved right into the job, with the experience of being assistant manager to me, as he is helping Louis van Gaal at the moment,” Ferguson said.
“But I would never ask a player to quit.”
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