FERGIE WAS LUCKY
LVG: We can emulate 1999 Euro stars – with a bit of good fortune
SITTING in a room dedicated to Manchester United’s years of European success, Louis van Gaal perhaps chose a peculiar moment and venue to declare with candour that his current club had been lucky to win Sir Alex Ferguson’s first final back in 1999.
Nevertheless, Van Gaal’s statement in Old Trafford’s Europa Suite yesterday came with a significant postscript. If that team can do it, he suggested, then so can this one.
‘Reaching the final is also an aim and winning the final is a little bit luck,’ said Van Gaal ahead of tonight’s Group B game at home against Wolfsburg.
‘I think so. It is not only about quality. It is also luck and I think Manchester United know and remember that fantastically when they won the Champions League in 1999. I saw at that time the people of Bayern Munich going downstairs (to celebrate) and then United scored in the last minute and then in stoppage time they scored again.
‘You can say that is quality but when you see the match you know it is not like that.
‘When you reach the final, it is a fantastic achievement but in the media it is nothing. For me as a manager, when you reach the final, you have done fantastically and to win the final, of course, all the honours are going to your team and yourself but I know better.’
It was classically Van Gaal in its directness and hard to argue against, too.
United’s comeback against Bayern in Barcelona in 1999 remains one of the modern competition’s most iconic occasions and something that, as we reflect on an opening defeat at PSV this time round, would appear some way from the current United team’s reach.
Van Gaal, however, does not rule out winning the tournament again by the time he is due to leave United at the end of next season, while midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger, who won it in 2013 with Bayern Munich at Wembley, claimed yesterday that it could even happen this time round.
Asked if United could win it, Schweinsteiger said: ‘ Yes. I think so. But of course first of all we have to do our work.
‘We lost the first match against PSV Eindhoven so as the manager said we have to win our games at home. I think the best strength of this team is the spirit of the players.’
The loss of their opening fixture — and the loss of Luke Shaw to a broken leg that came with it — has certainly lent tonight’s meeting with the German club a little more importance than many would perhaps have expected.
For all that United sit on the top of the Barclays Premier League, they can lack a little conviction at times, something that they must correct this evening.
Schweinsteiger, in flawless English, recalled visits to Old Trafford as a Bayern player and — moments after referring to Van Gaal as ‘Sir’ — referred to the powerr of the home crowd inn Manchester.
‘It’s not easy to play here for the first time as a visitingi iti player,’ he said. ‘The supporters, you can feel the power of them and it’s good for us. But we have to play well and that’s the most important thing.’
Van Gaal will be without Michael Carrick tonight and must check on Ander Herrera and Antonio Valencia, who both missed training with minor niggles yesterday.
Asked if it bothered him that his team has not received much credit for their ascent to the top of the Premier League, Van Gaal said it didn’t. In terms of his own future, meanwhile, nothing changes. He is due to leave at the end of next season and said yesterday: ‘Normally I shall leave after next year but what is normal in our football world?
‘You never know so I cannot answer that question. I promised my wife to go with her to our}holiday paradise in Portugal so it shall be very hard for me to deny that promise.’