No one does tetchy quite like Louis van Gaal. Were it not for José Mourinho, the Manchester United manager would be out on his own in the Premier League and the most reliable way to give Mr Grump a bit more hump is to ask him about his relationship with Ronald Koeman.
The Dutch pair are not bosom buddies, reportedly, since a falling out at Ajax, where Van Gaal accused Koeman of engineering his removal, but the United manager does not want to talk about it. “Our relationship is private,” he said on Friday, about a dozen times. “If you keep asking the same question I will keep giving you the same answer.”
Relations are not so frosty that a handshake for the cameras cannot be managed on Monday, when Van Gaal takes a United side fourth at the start of the weekend to meet Koeman’s third-placed Southampton at St Mary’s in what few imagined in August would be a top-six encounter by December. United may have been given an outside chance of occupying the higher slopes at some point, if only on account of all the money they spent, but in summer most people had Southampton down for a relegation struggle. Even some of their season-ticket holders were being tardy about renewing, on the understandable grounds that the club had parted with their promising young manager and sold most of their best players.
Koeman has changed all those perceptions in a remarkably short space of time and Van Gaal is willing to acknowledge the achievement. “Southampton have more points than Liverpool,” he said. “Their sequence of results has been good but I never doubted that Ronald Koeman would be able to make a success of the club. He is a very good coach and even if Southampton lost a lot of players before the start of the season I knew he would still do a good job.”
Van Gaal is obviously willing to give credit where it is due, then, even if there were a couple more backhanded compliments. “We lost players too,” Van Gaal said. “But you don’t read so much about that in the media. And when Southampton go out to buy a player, they don’t have to pay top price, like we do. I don’t imagine Southampton ever have to pay too much for their players. We have to pay extra every time because we are Manchester United.”
One bargain Koeman and Van Gaal could probably agree on is Graziano Pellè, who played for both coaches at AK Alkmaar and the former at Feyenoord before following Koeman to Southampton. “I am not surprised at his success this season. I bought him at AZ as he was an attacking point,” Van Gaal said.
“I like players who can bring in others as well as score goals. He is very creative, he reminds me of Robin van Persie because he always sees the third man. He is the kind of striker that I like, so I am not surprised to see him doing so well in England. It may be surprising that he has scored nine goals – that is a lot – but I knew he could do it. I saw him playing for his national squad when the Under-21 Championships were in the Netherlands. I like him and I signed him but at the time he had to compete with Shota Arveladze, one of the best strikers I have trained in my career. That was not easy for him but he joined the squad and showed his ability and then after Koeman takes him to Feyenoord he explodes. It is fantastic for him.”
Van Gaal says he will be happy to shake Koeman’s hand – “That will not be a problem” – but doubts if he will join him later for a drink because he will probably not get the opportunity. “I have heard of this English custom but I don’t know where managers find the time,” he said. “On matchdays I am talking to the press before and after the game and in between I am talking to my players. I managed to have a chat with Mark Hughes’s assistants after the last game against Stoke but Mark Hughes himself was speaking to the press and then I had to do the same. On matchdays I rarely get the time to talk to opposing managers.”
United would move into third place with a victory against Southampton and from that position, especially with players returning from injury and talk of a big-money galáctico policy for the future, one might imagine Van Gaal to be congratulating himself on keeping pace with the first part of his remit, to get United back into European contention. He is not exactly doing that. The galáctico scenario does not win his approval, because it is “disgusting and disrespectful to the players already at the club” to talk of major outlay in advance. And United are not quite back in the Champions League yet.
“I am happy with where we are. We are doing better,” Van Gaal said. “But where we are now doesn’t count. It is where we are at the end of the season that matters. We have had a lot of injuries and had to make a lot of changes but the important thing for me is that the players want to follow the philosophy. That is why, despite the many changes, we have been able to continue.”
