Louis van gaal biography pdf

Dutch footballer and manager (born 1951)

"Van Gaal" redirects here. For the Main-belt Asteroid, see 14616 Van Gaal.

"LvG" redirects here. For other uses, see LVG (disambiguation).

In this Dutch name, the surname is Van Gaal, not Gaal.

Aloysius Paulus Maria "Louis" van Gaal (Dutch pronunciation:[luˈʋivɑŋˈɣaːl]; born 8 August 1951) is a Dutch former football player and former manager who currently serves as an advisor for Ajax. At club level, he served as manager of Ajax, Barcelona, AZ Alkmaar, Bayern Munich and Manchester United, as well as having three spells in charge of the Netherlands national team. Van Gaal is one of the most decorated managers in the history of the game, having won 20 major honours in his managerial career at club level, contrasting with his mediocre results coaching the Dutch national team. He is sometimes nicknamed the "Iron Tulip".

Before his career as a coach, Van Gaal played as a midfielder for Royal Antwerp, Telstar, Sparta Rotterdam, Ajax and AZ Alkmaar. He is also a qualified physical education teacher, and worked at high schools during his career as a semi-professional footballer. After a brief spell as an assistant coach at AZ, Van Gaal served as an assistant under Leo Beenhakker at Ajax, and eventually took over as head coach in 1991. Under his lead, the club won three Eredivisietitles, the UEFA Cup and the UEFA Champions League. He moved to Barcelona in 1997 and won two league titles and one Copa del Rey, but left after disagreements with the club's hierarchy.

Van Gaal was then appointed at the Netherlands, but failed to qualify for the 2002 FIFA World Cup. This preceded another brief spell at Barcelona, before he returned to AZ, where he won an Eredivisie title, the club's second ever in its history. He moved to Bayern Munich in 2009, and in Germany won the Bundesliga, the DFB-Pokal and reach

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Louis van Gaal, coach AZ Alkmaar

“The objective creates the exercise” It was a big disappointment for AZ Alkmaar and Louis van Gaal when a great season came to a bitter end in the play-off game against FC Groningen. We talked to van Gaal and we saw a completely different person than the one we saw during the press conference after that unfortunate game. He was proud of the amount of points the team was able to gather throughout the season and the way in which they played. He was also eagerly looking forward to the season ahead. Van Gaal comes to life when he can finally talk about soccer coaching as opposed to the other issues that surround the game. Full of passion he explains his vision, frequently using the magnetic board. Fortunately he finds it extremely important to be well understood, so from time to time he takes his foot off the gas to explain everything in great detail, making sure we understand what he is saying. Louis van Gaal at his best: on pressing, formations, ball movement and of course dominant play. By: Hans Slender and Paul van Veen

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No. 16 - August/September 2006

Van Gaal is known as a fan of dominant play, or dominant soccer. But what is dominant soccer? “Dominant soccer, in my opinion, means that you are the team that decides the flow of the game”, van Gaal starts to explain. “Meaning creating more chances than the opponent, playing offensively and doing this based on technical and tactical capacity, whereby the will to win plays an essential role. You therefore assume an offensive rather than defensive organization. The core of this is that you decide what happens on the field; of course this is open for discussion, because when you play from a defensive organization you can also dictate to a degree, as you determine that the opponent attacks in a small space. This, however, is not dominant play, because you do not determine the situation in an offensive manner.”

Dominant Whether dominant soccer

“Few teams, among all I have seen play, have seduced me than that of Ajax under Van Gaal. The ease of creating the game behind the fast side of players and the way they pass the ball to the feet through the spaces. This Ajax could solve completely fantastically all “one-against-one” that can exist in a game. In both attack and defense. They assume the risk that a team can take. This was something that surprised me, which astonished me. Positional discipline. Possession of the ball as the basic idea. The game in constant support. Movements…And they did it all as simple as a sublime way. They were able to do perfectly is what I believe that a football team must always do. Van Gaal’s Ajax gave football lessons to those who were familiar with the game.” – Pep Guardiola.

Van Gaal’s football philosophy is one that gives preference to attack over defense, to win games by scoring more than the opposition than by conceding fewer goals. This is in line with the Dutch school of thought that has permeated modern football from Spain to Germany. Likewise, possession is given prominence in the way a team attacks in order to ensure a controlled way of playing. Possession is not considered an attacking strategy by itself but merely a strategy to control the game. By controlling the game, a team can then accomplish its defensive and attacking objectives much easily. But like Van Gaal admits, sometimes possession is a detriment to its objectives if there is no purpose behind it. Too much possession can only force the opposition to close down and be compact which contradicts the proactive view that possession must be used to move the opponent and create gaps, if a team knows how to do so. As the Dutch coach states,

“You decide how the opponent play their football and not that the opponent decides where we have to play”

However, what sets apart Van Gaal’s philosophy from the vast majority is his insistence on clear movements and structure that force play