Louis van Gaal future: Manager says he'll leave Manchester United if the team want him to go

The Dutchman's struggling side take on fellow top-four contenders Tottenham at Old Trafford on Sunday with the United manager saying all is fine at the moment, writes Tim Rich

Louis van Gaal, right, and Ryan Giggs after Manchester United’s 0-0 draw at Burnley on Saturday (Getty)

There must be a part of every player than longs for the day Louis van Gaal quits. The training sessions, analysed in minute detail, the rigid tactics, the verbal punishments that come from losing possession; all seem so joyless. When Bayern Munich’s president, Uli Hoeness, fired him, it was with the words: “There has been no fun at this club for such a long time.”

In May 2008, the players of AZ Alkmaar had their chance to push him out and they ended up pleading with Van Gaal to stay.

Alkmaar may have been a modest club in a medieval town famed for its cheeses but a Dutch banker, Dirk Scheringa, financed it and they had very nearly been relegated. Before the final match of the season, Van Gaal told his players he was resigning. “Then the players came to my house to ask me to stay and the board also. The next year we were champions,” Van Gaal recalled this week. That was the year Scheringa’s bank went bust.

“When I think the chemistry between the players and the manager is not good enough any more, then I go,” Van Gaal added. “But when I see this chemistry at Manchester United between myself and my players, I don’t have any doubts. We have to continue our process. Of course, we can have disappointing moments but we can survive and we have the confidence to qualify for the Champions League.”

Monday night’s defeat in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup was a “disappointing moment” for many reasons. It broke the dominance United have exerted over Arsenal for nearly a decade and it ensured that for the first time since 1989 they would go two seasons without silverware.

“I can still win the title,” said Van Gaal, who will go into Sunday afternoon’s encounter with Tottenham at least 10 points off the pace. “But it will be very difficult because normally Chelsea shall win that.”

Van Gaal should play this XI against Spurs...

Had things gone differently, he might have been managing Tottenham. After Andre Villas-Boas’ departure last season, the Spurs chairman, Daniel Levy, visited Van Gaal in the penthouse with views over the Zuiderzee he was renting for €3,000 a month while managing the Dutch national team. Ruud Gullit described the outcome as “a done deal”.

It wasn’t, mainly because Van Gaal would not commit to any movement before the World Cup campaign was finished. Levy turned first to Tim Sherwood and then, when that brief affair ended messily, to Mauricio Pochettino.

Van Gaal said he admired the Argentine, mainly because he put his trust in young players such as Harry Kane and Ryan Mason, when he could have gone for older, more conservative options. They also share a similar attitude to training, which at Tottenham’s centre at Enfield is filmed from several angles.

Kane has credited Pochettino not just with improving his fitness – something he took to extremes while managing Southampton – but “giving me the confidence to go out there and feel I can beat a man”.

Harry Kane celebrates scoring for Tottenham against QPR (Getty Images)

That should come as standard for Angel Di Maria, notwithstanding the £60m Manchester United paid for him. His dismissal against Arsenal – which featured a rare trademark cross for Wayne Rooney’s equaliser – summed up his time at Old Trafford.

Like Fernando Torres at Chelsea and Andrei Shevchenko and Juan Sebastian Veron before him, the weight of being the Premier League’s most expensive footballer appears to be dragging him down.

In one of his few interviews since exchanging Madrid for Manchester – a city David de Gea’s girlfriend, Edurne Garcia, described as “uglier than the back of a fridge” – Di Maria confessed he had seen little of it bar his house and the training ground.

The house in the Cheshire village of Prestbury has now been abandoned in favour of the Lowry Hotel following a break-in, triggering speculation that Di Maria might leave Old Trafford at the end of the season.

Van Gaal is rather more compassionate than his public image might suggest. Arjen Robben remarked that “he made me feel important” at Bayern Munich. When Ajax won the European Cup, he brought it into the laundry room at the De Meer Stadium and told the cleaning staff: “This is for you.” The parents of a 15-year-old United fan, who died suddenly, received a letter of condolence from Van Gaal.

Now he has said that, if Di Maria cannot settle in Manchester, he will talk to him about leaving. “It is part of my philosophy that a player is not just someone who kicks a ball from A to B,” he said.

“His environment must influence him. I shall always be open for that conversation [on whether he wants to quit] but I know the commercial interests of the club and we have to respect that.

“You cannot pay a lot of money for a player and then next season put him out of your selection. I think he shall stay because of what I have seen from his reaction to the defeat and his red card. I like his attitude.”

Angel Di Maria (GETTY IMAGES)

The battle is now squarely for Champions League qualification, a prize United once took auto- matically. There are five teams (Arsenal, United, Liverpool, Southampton and Tottenham) competing for the two places below Chelsea and Manchester City. Of the four, United have the hardest run-in and are the only ones averaging less than two points a game from their last 10 fixtures. Liverpool have taken 26 points from their last 10 matches.

“I don’t think I am here to talk about the financial consequences of not qualifying for the Champions League,” said Van Gaal. “I think they [the Glazer family] are pleased with my way of managing the club.

“I am not thinking of the consequences if I don’t finish third or fourth. It is very bad for the club but why do we have to speak about things that have not happened yet?

“We have been longer in the top four than Arsenal. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”