Louis van Gaal
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60%Born
1951 (72 years old)
Birth Place
Amsterdam, NetherlandsPosition
Central Midfield
Status
Retired
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Height
185 cm
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SoccerTeam
_Retired Soccer
2nd Team
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Aloysius Paulus Maria "Louis" van Gaal (Dutch pronunciation: ⓘ; born 8 August 1951) is a Dutch former football player and manager who currently serves as an advisor for AFC Ajax. At club level, he served as manager of Ajax, Barcelona, AZ Alkmaar, Bayern Munich and Manchester United, as well as having three spells in charge of the Netherlands national team. Van Gaal is one of the greatest and most decorated managers in the history of the game, having won 20 major honours in his managerial career. He is sometimes nicknamed the "Iron Tulip".
Before his career as a coach, Van Gaal played as a midfielder for Royal Antwerp, Telstar, Sparta Rotterdam, Ajax and AZ Alkmaar. He is also a qualified physical education teacher, and worked at high schools during his career as a semi-professional footballer. After a brief spell as an assistant coach at AZ, Van Gaal served as an assistant under Leo Beenhakker at Ajax, and eventually took over as head coach in 1991. Under his lead, the club won three Eredivisie titles, the UEFA Cup and the UEFA Champions League. He moved to Barcelona in 1997 and won two league titles and one Copa del Rey, but left after disagreements with the club's hierarchy.
Van Gaal was then appointed at the Netherlands, but failed to qualify for the 2002 FIFA World Cup. This preceded another brief spell at Barcelona, before he returned to AZ, where he won an Eredivisie title, the club's second ever in its history. He moved to Bayern Munich in 2009, and in Germany won the Bundesliga, the DFB-Pokal and reached the final of the UEFA Champions League. He returned to manage the Netherlands for a second time, where he led the nation to a third-place finish at the 2014 FIFA World Cup. He was hired by Manchester United later that summer, where he won the FA Cup, before being dismissed in 2016. Despite announcing his retirement due to family reasons in 2019, Van Gaal returned to management in August 2021, when he was appointed as head coach of the Netherlands for a third time.
Van Gaal was born in Amsterdam. As a youngster, he started playing for the Amsterdam amateur side RKSV de Meer. At the age of 20, he joined the second team of Ajax, but was never chosen to play in the first team, which at the time boasted players such as Johan Cruyff and Johan Neeskens in the midfield positions. He was loaned to Belgian First Division side Royal Antwerp playing under Guy Thys with whom he was runner-up in the Belgian top division in 1974 and 1975. During his time with Antwerp, Van Gaal suffered a broken nose in a friendly against K.V. Kortrijk. After four years spent in Belgium, he returned to his homeland and made his Eredivisie debut for Telstar under the guidance of manager, Mircea Petescu, whom he followed to Sparta Rotterdam. He later joined AZ, where he also became assistant coach in 1986. After a short career at AZ, he returned to Ajax to become Leo Beenhakker's assistant. When Beenhakker left in 1991, Van Gaal took over as manager.
The youngest of nine brothers and sisters, Van Gaal was brought up as a Catholic. His father, a salesman, died when Van Gaal was 11. At the age of 18, Van Gaal met Fernanda Obbes at a Catholic youth group. They married three years later, and had two daughters, Brenda and Renate. In 1994, Obbes died of liver and pancreatic cancer. Van Gaal was mocked by fans of Ajax's opponents for her illness. In 2008, Van Gaal married his current wife, Truus, with whom he shares a holiday home near Albufeira, Algarve, Portugal.
According to The Daily Telegraph, it emerged in 2009 that Van Gaal had lost millions of pounds investing in fraudster Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.
On 3 April 2022, Van Gaal said that he was receiving treatment for prostate cancer. On 12 April 2022, he said that his treatment was successful.
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1972-1973 |
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1977-1978 |
1978-1986 |
1986-1987 |
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