Stubborn Louis van Gaal outdone by old apprentice

Jose Mourinho and Louis van Gaal

“Our best match of the season” stated Louis Van Gaal, with an air of rehearsed nonchalance at the beginning of his prickly post match interview with Guy Mowbray. Judging purely on the basis of his much heralded(and maligned) philosophy, it was, indeed, a performance that would have made him happy.

Possession being the cornerstone of his brand of football, it was perfectly in line with what he wanted from his team. However, it was very much his stubborn insistence on playing the way they did that was their undoing, leading to a result that has all but handed the title to Chelsea.

Few would have bet against Jose Mourinho doing his homework. We’ve seen ample demonstrations of his efficiency against teams that love keeping the ball. He managed it with an Inter side shorn of any real superstars against a Barcelona team, most of whom have together been trained in the art of depriving their opponents of the ball since they were in their tender years.

Who’s to say that he wouldn’t be able to do it with a ruthlessly efficient Chelsea team against a United side only beginning to grasp the basics of the possession-based style their manager so craves to implement?In all probability, Van Gaal, a manager with over twenty years of top-flight experience would’ve definitely guessed his former apprentice’s plan of action. Mourinho’s Chelsea aren’t the kind of team that would afford them acres of space a la Liverpool (or Tottenham for that matter). They’re a team that follow their manager’s instructions to the letter, akin to all of the other teams he has previously coached.

Yet Van Gaal chose to go along with it, ultimately leading to a narrow, but well planned (on Mourinho’s part) defeat for United, in a manner reminiscent of the 2010 Champions League final where Bayern, then under Van Gaal, couldn’t score a single goal in spite of having 68% of the possession. Mourinho secured the treble for Inter and went on to pursue his Madrid dream.

For a manager who was paraded as a tactical mastermind for deviating from his purist methods and leading an inexperienced Dutch side to the semi-finals of the World Cup by making the best use of what was at his disposal, this was not a very good display of his tactical acumen.

This defeat isn’t by any means a catastrophe, nor are Manchester United in any danger of missing out on a top-four spot that seemed out of reach barely a month ago but it definitely warrants one simple question, will Louis van Gaal ever learn?

For all his pride at playing “beautiful football”, he knows he will not have this excuse to fall back on should he fail to deliver the title the next time around, with the man himself admitting post the match that despite them dominating the statistics-United strung together 665 passes to Chelsea’s 284, with an accuracy of 91.3% to Chelsea’s 71.5%, statistics did not matter for Chelsea scored the sole goal and got the result they wanted.

As for Jose Mourinho, it’s yet another masterclass, or so he can claim. It might have been a different story though, and a completely different game, had Wayne Rooney’s shot early in the first half gone in.

This might very well have been an article with Jose on the receiving end. Like always, it’s a winner-takes-all situation.

As far as combining results with flair goes, he could learn a thing or two from a certain Sir Alex Ferguson.