Wesley Sneijder does not foresee a successful third period for Louis van Gaal as national coach of the Dutch national team. On Tuesday, Van Gaal was officially introduced; at an earlier stage, he already presented a 25-man pre-selection for the World Cup qualifiers against Norway (1 September), Montenegro (4 September) and Turkey (7 September). Sneijder thinks that Van Gaal lacks time to become successful.
“I think that will break him up”, says Sneijder Wednesday evening from the studio of RTL7, where he is present as an analyst around the match between Benfica and PSV in the last preliminary round of the Champions League. “I don’t think it will be a success; I think the time is too short. He also agreed yesterday that it might not be the right time to step in. We’ll see. I understood that he was with some players. called for an hour, but there is no player who is going to say they are not happy with his arrival? I think in particular that Mr. Van Gaal talked for fifty minutes.”
Wesley Sneijder about Van Gaal’s appointment as national coach of the Dutch:
“It’s not going to be a success.”#UCL #benpsv pic.twitter.com/RmOCUFdMYQ
— VTBL ? (@vtbl) August 18, 2021
Sneijder agrees that he speaks ‘from his own experience’ when making that last comment. As an international he also worked with Van Gaal. “I know Van Gaal can do it, but he doesn’t have the time, so it’s going to be a difficult week. When he motivated me to prepare for the World Cup, it also took a while. to change everything. It was an incentive for me then, I just wanted to go to the World Cup. That also applies to the players now. They are therefore not going to say to Van Gaal: “I do not agree at all that you are national coach is going to be.'”
Furthermore, Sneijder does not believe much of the explanation that Van Gaal gave on Tuesday about his much-discussed statement about a ‘glorified bunch of stars’. “The fact that he says ‘check it out’ means that he checked it himself and that he was able to make this story out of it. I thought it was a correct press conference yesterday, but it would have been completely characterful if he had said : “I was indeed talking about the Dutch national team. It is to your credit to be honest that what he said is correct and that he is going to tackle those players? He talked about his regime yesterday and he wants the team to his hand That time is just not here now.”
Van Gaal was at the goodbye moment of the the Dutch Lionesses for the Olympic Games at the beginning of July and then addressed the players. “Now look at the Men’s European Championship. Then you see that a glorified bunch of stars can’t do it. And I have always seen under Sarina Wiegman that there was a team where people would go through fire for each other,” he referred to the national coach of the the Dutch Lionesses. ‘glorified bunch of stars’, and indicated that he previously had countries such as France and Portugal in mind.
Louis van Gaal explains his statement about the “glorified bunch of stars” ?? pic.twitter.com/c6zZr97gqF
— ESPN NL (@ESPNnl) August 17, 2021
According to him, the fact that almost everyone assumed that Van Gaal was referring to the Dutch is mainly due to the media. “The media thought: oh, he means the Dutch national team. But I didn’t say ‘the Dutch’ or ‘the Dutch team’, I said ‘the European Championship’. I mentioned an example that a collected bunch of individual players do not become champions. I had in my head: France, Portugal. Not the Dutch national team. Of course you had that in your head. Check it out. I said it to the ladies, then I wanted to make it clear that you can perform much better as a team than as a a bunch of individuals.”