'When something goes wrong in Barca, they always blame the foreigner'

It’s somewhat normal that football coaches are vain, and now and again, you hear interesting quotes from some of them who failed at some football clubs. Instead of being self-critical, they usually find some strange exuses, no matter how silly they are. And Louis Van Gaal is one of them. The Dutchman had a career downfall since 2000, first with Holland national team, then with Barcelona, then Bayern Munich and Manchester United. But, in his view, at least when it comes to the Catalonians, the main reason for failure was because he is not Spaniard.

Barcelona out of the biding war for Haaland

The current Netherlands coach was asked about his collegue Ronald Coeman and critcizm he recieves in Barcelona, and Van Gaal gave a very interesting reply.

"History is repeating itself. These are typical things that happen at Barcelona. When things go well and you make important contributions, like Frenkie de Jong has done these past couple of years, then there's nothing to worry about. But, when things go badly, people at Barcelona always look at the foreigners. In this case, that's the coach. I'd advise him to not pay much attention to it all" Van Gaal said during a Netherlands press conference.

(1.01) NETHERLANDS (25.0) GIBRALTAR (65.0)

Those are very interesting comments aimed at the club who had so many foreign coaches in the past, and most of them delivering success to the Catalonians, unlike Van Gaal. It’s worth remembering his second tenure with Barcelona in 2002, when he took over the club without any financial problems and with lots of stars in the team.

Rivaldo, Frank de Boer, Carles Puyol, Xavi, Javier Saviola, Phillip Cocu, Patrick Kluivert, Roman Riquelme, Marc Overmars, Luis Enrique, Victor Valdes, Thiago Motta and Andres Iniesta were among the players he inherited that season, but even with them, he managed to get the sack in under a year. First of all, he sold club’s icon Rivaldo, even thou the Brazilian won the World Cup during the summer, and then recorded defeats against Real Betis and Real Valladolid, which left Barca in the bottom half by the middle of October. He managed to lose another four games until Christmas and was in a relegation fight. By the end of January 2003, he was gone. When ahother foreigner came in as a caretaker manager (the Serb Radomir Antić), Barca finished in the sixt spot, a massive improvement over Van Gaal’s record (15th in La Liga). And the Dutchman was devastated when he got the sack.

“Van Gaal came into the dressing room after hearing the news, started to talk, and all of a sudden began crying like a baby. He was really hurt. It impacted me seeing him cry. He was a hard, cold person – and here he was destroyed” defender Phillipe Christanval told the press in 2016.