Jorge Mendes has accomplished much during his startling rise from nightclub DJ to the most powerful agent in world football.
On Saturday, he achieved something improbable, even for him: he inspired sympathy for Louis van Gaal. While the Dutchman was celebrating his first and last trophy as Manchester United manager, news emerged from the Mendes camp that his client Jose Mourinho was set to replace him at Old Trafford.
The timing showed a lack of class. Van Gaal deserved better. Not to keep his job because, despite winning the FA Cup, United were compelled to dismiss him, but at least to have a little time to enjoy the experience before it became obvious he was being ushered into retirement.
The manner of it illustrated the reservations some at Old Trafford harboured about Mourinho. He is not a perfect fit for United, with their history of attacking football and fondness for promoting young talent, but they had boxed themselves into a corner where they only had three options: the Portuguese, the untried Ryan Giggs, and the underachieving Van Gaal.
And United could not afford to approach a Premier League season that will feature Pep Guardiola, Antonio Conte, Jurgen Klopp, Arsene Wenger, Mauricio Pochettino and the defending champion Claudio Ranieri with Van Gaal at the helm.
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Van Gaal, 64, goes with a trophy, to mean he has won silverware in each of the four countries where he has managed, but the more telling statistics relate to the league. Van Gaal inherited a side that secured 64 points and left one that mustered 66: two years, only two points more and £285 million (Dh1.52 billion) spent.
He failed to grasp the scale of the opportunity he was afforded. Even after Tuesday's 3-1 win over Bournemouth, he complained supporters' expectations were too high. Some of those same fans booed him then, some when United won the FA Cup. There may have been uproar had he remained in charge.
Van Gaal, with the budget of a small nation, constructed the most boring United team for decades. Their tally of 49 league goals was absurdly low and indicative of an alien style of play, so laboured, so strange, so counter-productive that it was baffling.
His final game provided a microcosm of his reign, with a slow start, some direct football, a pivotal part for Marouane Fellaini, a whole host of players deployed out of position, a propensity to muddle through and a hint of redemption in the promise of youth, illustrated at Wembley by the FA Cup final match-winner Jesse Lingard.
He, Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial represent the best part of Van Gaal’s legacy as well as a test for Mourinho, who rarely puts his faith in embryonic attackers. They, plus Timothy Fosu-Mensah and Cameron Borthwick-Jackson, may yet mean Van Gaal’s reign is remembered more fondly in future years.
But while the younger generation offered optimism, Van Gaal’s failure came with more established individuals. He constructed a side that was much less than the sum of its expensive parts. He drew less from many of his charges than their previous managers or, in the case of some who left, their current managers. Mistakes were made with the players who left — Angel Di Maria and Javier Hernandez in particular — and with those who arrived. Mere mentions of Van Gaal’s signings — Bastian Schweinsteiger, Morgan Schneiderlin, Matteo Darmian, Marcos Rojo, Memphis Depay, Victor Valdes, Di Maria — serve as a shorthand for a regime’s flaws.
Van Gaal alienated players recklessly and managed them poorly. Mourinho’s initial tasks will include restoring many to the footballers they were before they encountered the Dutchman.
From a low base, Van Gaal took United forward, to fourth place, in his first season. But even that was no great feat, given the budget and given United’s enduring reliance on David De Gea’s brilliance, and they regressed again this year. Winning the FA Cup should not camouflage that. And, clearly, it did not, in the eyes of the employers who dispensed with him.
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