Wayne Rooney recently praised Louis van Gaal as “the very greatest” coach he’d worked with when it came to strategy, but the retired England striker claimed Sir Alex Ferguson was still “streets ahead.”
Louis van Gaal remained at the Red Devils for only two years, and was widely criticised for the manner of gameplay and the overall performance of his side. Despite his loss, Manchester United legend Ryan Giggs has said it was difficult working with van Gaal.
While, opening up on the difference between former coaches Ferguson and van Gaal, Giggs said he understood Rooney’s argument, he says life was even more difficult under Van Gaal than it was under Ferguson.
“I appreciate what Wayne has to suggest. Of course, we both worked under Sir Alex, whom I have known since I was 13,” Giggs told the website of United.
He went on to compare their coaching styles:
“Sir Alex has all-administrative, consistency, professionalism, strategy, experience as a player, so with him, as we had so strong players who had been around for a long time, you should only go out and play. You knew your role. It was just a matter of tweaking that role.
“The same is about Louis. Under him we played various systems whereas under Sir Alex we played more or less just one system and we would tweak it. It was about having a feel of the various styles of playing. I know what Wayne said, because Louis worked a lot more on the training pitch in terms of playing patterns and tactical work.”
He said about van Gaal, “He’d come from Holland and also from an international background and he took that into the football club, so we had a lot of meetings – sometimes players felt too many! Now I know what Wayne means in terms of a great deal of learning under Louis.”
Meanwhile, his opinion on Ferguson was: “Everything was very easy, with Sir Alex. I’m not saying we didn’t have meetings – we did, of course – so we had some strong players that the boss might only have to inform them here and there will be only a little change here and there, so Ji-sung Park would go and mark Pirlo, for example, and Ji would do it and do it perfectly!”
