Van Gaal: The way United treated me was horrible
FORMER United manager Louis van Gaal has launched another scathing attack on his former employers.
Having criticised Jose Mourinho’s playing style and suggested he could return to the Premier League to ‘get one over’ on United, he has now blamed the club for him missing out on the Belgium national team job.
“I think the manner in which Manchester United treated me was horrible, and treacherous as well,” he told Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant.
“I had plenty of offers of work after I left United.
“The Belgian FA wanted me to become their national coach.
“But I couldn’t take a job with anyone for a year, because of the conditions United attached to my severance payment.
“So I missed out on the Belgium job, among others, despite thinking it would be a terrific challenge.
“I felt so resentful about letting this opportunity slip. It was stupid, as sporting considerations are the most important
“But back then I felt it was more about taking revenge on United, and that they should have to pay me the maximum amount.”
Van Gaal was sacked shortly after United won the FA Cup in 2016 and it’s not the first time in his career he’s been given the boot.
However, he believed Barcelona did it much better in similar circumstances in 2003.
“The way Barcelona’s president Josep Lluis Nunez behaved with me was fantastic,” he added.
“Not everyone in the world of football is a fake.” PHILIPPE Coutinho was still in his Park Lane hotel room awaiting permission to fly to Barcelona when the schadenfreude began.
“Coutinho will become the first Liverpool player to win a title since 1990,” one wag tweeted.
Another compared Coutinho and Marouane Fellaini’s trophy haul since they moved clubs in 2013. Fellaini has hoisted the FA Cup, League Cup and the Europa League at United, Coutinho was a runnerup in the Premier League, League Cup and Europa League.
But United supporters should be grateful for Liverpool allowing another pivotal player to move to Spain.
Coutinho’s eye-watering £142m fee is £56m less than Neymar’s, but his move to Barcelona feels like a game-changer for the Premier League elite.
Liverpool will have to trump the world record £75m fee for a defender they have just shelled out on Virgil van Dijk to convince their success-starved supporters they are serious competitors. Whomever they are interested in, they are bound to be taxed by selling clubs now their Anfield vault is teeming with cashs.
They have also unwittingly done Jose Mourinho a favour.
Liverpool have received more for Coutinho than the £140.9m United paid for Victor Lindelof, Romelu Lukaku and Nemanja Matic in a summer Mourinho wanted four new signings and ended it with three. The Reds boss is going to need more money.
United sources suggested Inter simply did not want to sell Ivan Perisic, although that has been refuted by others. The Reds’ final offer for the Croat was £39m - well short of the £50m Inter were holding out for - and the suspicion is United’s de facto £150m summer budget was not enough to buy Perisic and Matic. It has contributed to Mourinho’s rancour in recent months.
The United boss gave a diplomatic sermon days after he insisted the £286.2m he has spent is ‘not enough.’ He and United had not been seemingly singing from the same hymn sheet and he took his pre-Southampton press conference as an opportunity to turn over a few leaves and get back on the same page. Mourinho ended his press conference by opining ‘I don’t think’ United will make any additions in the January transfer window. A senior Reds source described the winter window as an ‘opportunistic market’ and Barcelona have lived up to that billing. Mourinho would ideally like a winger and a central midfielder to come in this month and he publicly encouraged United to do business at the start of December. By the end of the month, he was speaking about signing ‘two or three players’ in the summer, which would be insufficient. Liverpool have emerged as an unlikely accomplice. The amount they have received for a forward who has played 10 Champions League ties in five years and never featured in a World Cup means fees for his peers who have achieved more are going to soar. United simply are not going to be Samuel Luckhurst