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