Valentijn Driessen reacted to the events during the press conference of Louis van Gaal on Monday afternoon. The football chief of De Telegraaf got involved in a discussion with Van Gaal: according to Driessen, the national coach wants to play with the the Dutch as Chelsea does, which according to him entails a defensive playing style. Van Gaal sees it differently and said that Driessen has ‘no sense at all’.
On social media, some react with a laugh to the way in which Van Gaal approaches the journalist. “I don’t think I am as good on social media as Van Gaal,” said Driessen, who indicates, however, that Van Gaal’s criticism of “the media” is not always logical. “He always talks about ‘the media’, but he means two or three people. The rest are all panties wearers. They all wear his pants, man.”
According to Louis van Gaal, a 5-3-2 formation does not have to be defensive at all. “You have no idea at all” pic.twitter.com/m4Qo1545Tp
— ESPN NL (@ESPNnl) September 6, 2021
Van Gaal emphasized at the press conference that defensive football has made its appearance and that the public is applauding for it. “But the one applauding is you. You also want to play like that, like Chelsea and Liverpool,” Driessen said. Van Gaal does not find that style ‘at all’ defensive. “With 5-3-2 or 5-2-3 you can attack incredibly well. Chelsea shows it every time, with different formations,” he said, among other things.
“We all love the Dutch national team in Brazil, probably because expectations were very low, but outside the Netherlands you don’t hear about the game of the Dutch national team in Brazil,” Driessen responds in the podcast. “Four years earlier we came in second, just in a 4-3-3. I prefer that. All those number combinations don’t matter when Norway, Montenegro and Turkey are your opponents.”
“I can imagine that you have to adapt if Italy, Spain or Brazil becomes your opponent. Of course you should not think that you have Mbappe against Daley Blind. Then you have to adapt something, I understand that” , says Driessen, who recognizes that a team can indeed play offensively in a 5-3-2 formation or a 5-2-3. “But it happens so little. The Dutch team didn’t do it and neither did Chelsea.”
“That’s where the discussion started. He said everyone applauds for a defensive tendency, then I said he clap just as hard for that. He said that’s not defensive. But I’ve looked at Chelsea and I’m sure: about a For six months, nobody knows that Chelsea has won the Champions League, because it just doesn’t look like it,” concludes the journalist, who also responded to the discussion in a video of the newspaper.