Louis van Gaal, born August 8, 1951, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, is a highly influential Dutch football manager and former player. Renowned for his tactical acumen and strong personality, Van Gaal had a modest playing career before transitioning into coaching. He rose to prominence as a manager at Ajax, where he won three Eredivisie titles and the UEFA Champions League in 1995. Van Gaal’s success continued with Barcelona, winning La Liga twice and another UEFA Champions League title. He later managed clubs like Bayern Munich and Manchester United, winning domestic league titles with both. Van Gaal is known for his emphasis on disciplined defending and possession-based football. While his managerial style has sometimes been criticized for its rigidity, his impact on football tactics and development is widely acknowledged, cementing his status as one of the most respected managers in the sport.
Louis van Gaal Quotes
01.“I am not a dictator; I am a communicator.”
— Louis van Gaal
02.“I had to follow Bobby Robson at Barcelona. He had won three titles.”
— Louis van Gaal
03.“I don’t think my players are robots. They are humans and make errors.”
— Louis van Gaal
04.“I worked at the number one team in the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and now also in England.”
— Louis van Gaal
05.“The media likes me because I give honest answers. How many people in football give honest answers? I don’t lie. Always the truth. OK, maybe my truth. But it is the truth.”
— Louis van Gaal
06.“I have no ambition to be a technical director or TV pundit.”
— Louis van Gaal
07.“I am not a usual coach: it doesn’t matter for me who are scoring the goals.”
— Louis van Gaal
08.“I like it if a coach enjoys himself and is passionate.”
— Louis van Gaal
09.“I thought always Manchester United can buy every player because they have a lot of power.”
— Louis van Gaal
10.“In the football world, you have to deliver. However, as an ex-player, you always have more credit.”
— Louis van Gaal
11.“I am open with the players, with my media officer, and also the media.”
— Louis van Gaal
12.“I am more open than other coaches with all of my players.”
— Louis van Gaal
13.“I am amazed when people say I am single-minded.”
— Louis van Gaal
14.“You are always evaluating. That philosophy is very important for me. Because of that, I am – or maybe I should say was – a very successful manager.”
— Louis van Gaal
15.“I have good memories of Manchester United.”
— Louis van Gaal
16.“It is not normal that one team dominates for 20 years in a row as the champion.”
— Louis van Gaal
17.“I think it is always a success when you win the title.”
— Louis van Gaal
18.“If you ask me how did I do at United, I will say it was my best year ever, given the circumstances I was working under. We played football that was quite alright. But it’s not football that is appreciated in England.”
— Louis van Gaal
19.“At Bayern, the people in charge are football men. I always appreciated that.”
— Louis van Gaal
20.“I always tried to defend high up the pitch, to be in the opposition’s half and play the game there.”
— Louis van Gaal
21.“You have expectations always when you buy players. Mostly, you have positive expectations.”
— Louis van Gaal
22.“I back all of my players, not only Wayne Rooney.”
— Louis van Gaal
23.“I think, always, the form of the players is a decisive factor. And a game-plan and the referee. He can influence the game. And in a derby, a cool head is also very important.”
— Louis van Gaal
24.“I have been privileged during my management career to have won 20 trophies, but winning the FA Cup, which is steeped in so much history, will always be one of the most special achievements of my career.”
— Louis van Gaal
25.“You have to play football to entertain the fans.”
— Louis van Gaal
26.“I’m always honest.”
— Louis van Gaal
27.“I’m not a stupid man.”
— Louis van Gaal
28.“In the Netherlands, the press writes what they want.”
— Louis van Gaal
29.“I hope that all the people who work with me remember me as a human being.”
— Louis van Gaal
30.“Every human being is special because they all have identities.”
— Louis van Gaal
31.“I am used to a lot of criticism.”
— Louis van Gaal
32.“You need always guts to put youngsters in the squad and also in the line-up.”
— Louis van Gaal
33.“I think you have to refresh the squad every year, and I have done it with all my clubs.”
— Louis van Gaal
34.“It has been an honor to manage such a magnificent club as Manchester United FC, and in doing so, I have fulfilled a long-held ambition.”
— Louis van Gaal
35.“The media do not analyse the game. They analyse the result.”
— Louis van Gaal
36.“Everybody thinks I am a narcissist. I am actually the opposite of that.”
— Louis van Gaal
37.“I think I could have worked as a technical director. But in this role, you can’t attend training or say anything for fear it won’t suit the coach, directors, or media. I don’t think I want a job like that.”
— Louis van Gaal
38.“With Ajax, I played Mexico in Mexico City, and our players could hardly keep up for half the match.”
— Louis van Gaal
39.“The pitch is the most important material for a football player.”
— Louis van Gaal
40.“It’s a principle of my philosophy that you have to respect the individual human being.”
— Louis van Gaal
41.“You cannot buy players and know, for sure, that they can deliver. You cannot know because football is a team sport.”
— Louis van Gaal
42.“When you have a lot of ball possession, you have a lot of ball possession to create chances, not to play the ball around and not score.”
— Louis van Gaal
43.“Yes, I have a philosophy, and you have to come with good arguments to change that philosophy, but, if someone has a better argument than me, then I will change.”
— Louis van Gaal
44.“I think the team is always better than the individual player.”
— Louis van Gaal
45.“There is no winter break, and I think that is the most evil thing of this culture. It is not good for English football. It is not good for the clubs or the national team, and I think you should change it.”
— Louis van Gaal
46.“I hope at Manchester United I can do my best. I will do my best.”
— Louis van Gaal
47.“You have to live in the present, I think.”
— Louis van Gaal
48.“Players can play bad, and certainly when you have only three days or six days training sessions in your legs, and you have to play 45 minutes. Everybody can say that it’s easy to step in, but it is not easy.”
— Louis van Gaal
49.“When you win the FA Cup, you have a title and a very respectable title in England – more than other countries.”
— Louis van Gaal
50.“I always played attacking football.”
— Louis van Gaal
51.“It cannot be a good thing when a club is run solely from a commercially-driven perspective.”
— Louis van Gaal
52.“Rashford’s pace is incredible. You don’t catch him when he breaks away.”
— Louis van Gaal
53.“OK, Wayne Rooney is always the center of attention, and I always have to answer questions about him. But Wayne is Wayne, and he will always contribute in a game.”
— Louis van Gaal
54.“I am immensely proud to have helped United win the FA Cup for the 12th time in the club’s history.”
— Louis van Gaal
55.“Having managed in Holland, Spain, and Germany, I had always hoped for the opportunity to manage in English football and be part of English culture.”
— Louis van Gaal
56.“When I have signed for clubs, I have always spoken a long time with the CEO or with the owners, not only at United, but also at Bayern Munich and Barcelona, and I have the faith that they always support me.”
— Louis van Gaal
57.“I have to treat all of the players at the same level with the same rules and same demands. It’s difficult to understand, because the outside world is thinking when you pay a lot for the player, then you have to put him in the squad.”
— Louis van Gaal
58.“It’s very important to win your home games.”
— Louis van Gaal
59.“When I was coach at Ajax, in the first half of the season, the players needed time to adapt to me, to know who I am as a person and as a coach.”
— Louis van Gaal
60.“We need to learn that in the Champions League, the referees are vigilant and quick to whistle.”
— Louis van Gaal
61.“A player needs to focus on one thing to be successful, while a coach is thinking about the whole process.”
— Louis van Gaal
62.“The accommodation for the players to dress themselves, to change into their club shirts, are in most stadiums not so good.”
— Louis van Gaal
63.“When I speak, I am well articulated.”
— Louis van Gaal
64.“Having coached Ajax, Barcelona, the Netherlands, FC Bayern, and Manchester United like I did, it is difficult for any offer to be interesting.”
— Louis van Gaal
65.“I have a philosophy. I was convinced of it, and by winning trophies in four countries, I proved the philosophy worked.”
— Louis van Gaal
66.“I look for players who do not just score goals but provide an attacking point, linking with other players and able to see the third man as well. Van Persie is one of the best strikers around at that.”
— Louis van Gaal
67.“It’s not always the fault of the manager when a player is not performing well, I can tell you.”
— Louis van Gaal
68.“It was very difficult to succeed Bert van Marwijk because, two years before, he was second in the World Cup, and then he left a broken-up team behind – so that was much more difficult than You think.”
— Louis van Gaal
69.“As coaches, we have to give a lot of information. Too much, I think.”
— Louis van Gaal
70.“You have to deal with a lot of things when you are a professional football player, and that is not so easy.”
— Louis van Gaal
71.“When you have an older group of players, they play on automatic pilot a lot of the time, but with youngsters, you have more intuition.”
— Louis van Gaal
72.“With Luis Enrique, I never expected he would become a coach. He was an intuition player; he didn’t speak with me about tactics.”
— Louis van Gaal
73.“A system depends on the players you have.”
— Louis van Gaal
74.“Preparing your tactical formation is essential. Each player needs to know where he has to be, and that is why there needs to be mutual understanding: because you need absolute discipline.”
— Louis van Gaal
75.“Every player gets his time, no matter who you are.”
— Louis van Gaal
76.“Winning the FA Cup with Manchester United was my biggest achievement.”
— Louis van Gaal
77.“It’s difficult to beat German teams. They don’t play as attractively as, for example, you have it in the English league or in the Spanish league. But to break a German team is not very easy.”
— Louis van Gaal
78.“Success at United doesn’t depend on money but about which players we bring in.”
— Louis van Gaal
79.“It’s not hard at all to make the switch from United to Oranje. For a manager, it’s totally different than for a player.”
— Louis van Gaal
80.“Of course, I have ambition to become World Champions with Oranje.”
— Louis van Gaal
81.“I think it’s fantastic to be here in England. They live football: football is living, and living is football.”
— Louis van Gaal
82.“My conviction is that a full professional also wants to live professionally.”
— Louis van Gaal
83.“I am proud people still like me. That is what is most important in life.”
— Louis van Gaal
84.“You always need the hunger to play in the first team.”
— Louis van Gaal
85.“I criticize the media for inventing stories.”
— Louis van Gaal
86.“I speak English my way, but people understand it. You can understand everything I say, and that’s the most important thing.”
— Louis van Gaal
87.“The most important thing is they have to know why we do things and when. A lot of players are playing intuitively, and I want them to think and know why they do something.”
— Louis van Gaal
88.“Sometimes players are very fed up with my communication, but that’s what I do, and they know how I think. But they know I am very transparent.”
— Louis van Gaal
89.“I watch the Premier League, the Spanish and Dutch leagues, and a little bit of the German league.”
— Louis van Gaal
90.“Players count for nothing. The team is everything.”
— Louis van Gaal
91.“The coach is the focal point of the team, but you need to have an open mind, and so do all the players. Everyone needs to work together to achieve a common goal.”
— Louis van Gaal
92.“I was 11 when my father died, so I didn’t know my father so well.”
— Louis van Gaal
93.“The basis of my confidence is that I wasn’t a talented player. I was a talented human being. At school, I always had good figures. I was the captain of all my football teams. I studied physical education at the Academy, so I learned to analyse, to observe, and to take decisions.”
— Louis van Gaal
94.“I was a fan of Henk Groot, former striker of Ajax, who scored many goals with his head. I thought, ‘I can do that also,’ but I couldn’t.”
— Louis van Gaal
