Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 9:22 PM• Rian Rosendaal

Pierre van Hooijdonk has a very high opinion of Louis van Gaal. The former attacker experienced the national coach up close during the qualifying series for the 2022 World Cup and during that period the experienced coach made a great impression with his way of working. Van Hooijdonk even dares to say that the Dutch national team has never had a better national coach.

The the Dutch squad did not qualify for the final round in Japan and South Korea. “No, it was not a success”, Van Hooijdonk sighs more than twenty years later in an interview with NU.nl. “And yet in that period I found that Van Gaal was the national coach with the most knowledge for me.” The analyst explains why he thinks this way about the current national coach. “I noticed that he thought two steps higher than other coaches. More specific. Under him it was no longer standard positional play in training.”

“It became positional games with an idea behind it, with the upcoming match in mind”, recalls Van Hooijdonk, with 46 international matches to his name. “I thought: wow, this is different. Especially if what Van Gaal already indicated during training came out in the match.” In that whole process, the approach of the group of players was very important, the former striker believes. verbal full up. He could do that because he commanded respect with his knowledge. Players accepted it.”

At the time, Van Hooijdonk was mainly used as a substitute by Van Gaal. More than two decades ago, the the Dutch had a very difficult qualifying series, including a loss of points against Portugal. The 1-0 defeat against Ireland on September 1, 2001 was fatal for the Dutch national team. In the end, it was the Irish who, together with Portugal, traveled to Japan and South Korea for the World Cup.