‘Van Gaal treated us all like kids, it was crazy’

IT DOESN'T take much to bring a smile to Nani’s face. He glows when the conversation turns to teaching his two-year-old son Lucas the rudiments of football in their Istanbul back garden. A similar swell of delight is obvious when asked about the passion with which the fans of Sporting and Fenerbahce embraced him in Portugal and Turkey these past two seasons.

Mobbed by thousands at Lisbon airport, Fenerbahce fans mounting his car en route to the Sukru Saracoglu stadium, Nani repaid them with two of the most consistently destructive campaigns of his career. Over the past two years, his output in the modern metrics of key passes, crosses and goals per 90 minutes is on a par or superior to Mesut Ozil, David Silva and Riyad Mahrez, the Premier League’s leading chance creators. Nani is replicating the form he showed at Manchester United in 2010-11 — pursued by Barcelona and named Players’ Player of the Year for a season in which a tally of 28 goals and assists led the top division.

“I scored so many goals; a lot of assists,” he recalls. “All the team was giving me the power, the manager too. I was feeling very confident. And when it’s like that you fly. If you have the quality, when your team and your manager show they believe in you, it’s different.”

What then of the man who thought it wise to ground Nani at Old Trafford, Louis van Gaal, the manager who refused to believe in a player who could have ticked all the boxes he’s spent two underwhelming years at United moaning about? In the summer of 2014 Van Gaal was full of himself, revelling in reports of the “genius” who dragged Holland to a World Cup semi-final and would now revitalise England’s richest club. Nani played every minute and scored for Portugal at the finals. When Van Gaal declared: “We don’t have wingers of the highest level ... I think we need to buy,” Nani knew he wasn’t wanted.

“He didn’t use me a lot in pre-season,” recalls Nani. “I was the player who had the least time in all the games and I was feeling, ‘This coach doesn’t count on me’. He and his assistant were shouting at players like we were kids, like 18-year-olds. And I think, ‘This is not the way to treat us because I am professional, I am training every day, I’m doing nothing wrong, I’m putting quality in the training’.”

Van Gaal’s weapon of choice was Albert Stuivenberg, his assistant, who berated players for passing at the wrong time, passing in the wrong way, not passing at all, not taking a touch before shooting. It was the antithesis of how an intuitive forward such as Nani learnt to play; a contradiction of the way Sir Alex Ferguson encouraged him to beat opponents with skill or pace, then place the ball in position for a colleague to score.

Nani knows how to make the hardest of attacking decisions quickly. The Dutch pair sought to drill that out of him. “‘You must pass the ball like this’, ‘Come on!’ Blah, blah, blah. It’s crazy. It’s difficult to play football like that. Because football is instinct. It’s decision. It’s what you see. If you see you must shoot, first touch. If you see you must take a touch, you take a touch. If you dribble, you dribble. That’s why you make different type of goals.”

Nani, entering the second season of a five-year, £20m contract, was granted a solitary substitute’s appearance by Van Gaal. Three days later, the Dutchman loaned him to Sporting in a deal from which United took no fee but paid most of his salary. One trophy-winning year later, they compounded the error by selling him to Fenerbahce for less than £5m.

Tellingly, Nani’s critique of Van Gaal is echoed by players who replaced him at United and some who remained. One of the 64-year-old’s most expensive signings talks of a “coach who could destroy any player’s confidence”. Van Gaal’s results, his style of play, are so far divorced from Ferguson’s United it’s absurd.

“Now when you see Manchester, it’s not Manchester,” says Nani. “With all respect to the players who are there, the personality, the mentality is all different. When you see Manchester United go inside the pitch you see a new era.

“Before you had big names, experienced players who represent so many years at the club. Now you see players who are maybe in their first year, their first time in the Premier League. It’s all new.

“With Ferguson the manager always said, ‘100% we will score. If we don’t concede we will win the game’. It is different times, people must understand it’s a different coach, different players. They make their choice to renew the club, so now they have to deal with that. It’s not working. But what can you do?”

For now, Nani’s focus in on helping Fenerbahce win Turkey’s title. He is recovered from a thigh injury that the specialist who repaired it attributed to the “anger, upset, nerves and stress” of being sidelined by David Moyes without explanation after Ferguson’s replacement convinced him to renew his United contract. His body stronger for the rehab work, with the added maturity of fatherhood, the 29-year-old would like to return to the Premier League.

With a modest release clause of £6.5m written into his contract, Nani should not lack suitors. He knows the league, speaks the language, has survived Manchester winters, still owns a house in Wilmslow. And he speaks fondly of English tackling. “If you play in the Premier League and you don’t have scars, you weren’t on the pitch,” he laughs.

“I have unfinished business in England. I would like to have another opportunity in one of these best leagues because when you are on the high level all the people consider at a higher level what you did. Now, for example, if I do something here, or I do something in Portugal, they will say ‘Yes, it’s in Portugal. OK, it’s in Turkey.’

“But football is football. What you do here, what you do in Portugal is the same as what you do in England. You must have the opportunity to play, you must be on the pitch. If I did it once when I was in England, if I go there I will do it again. If I go to Spain I will do it. It is all about being confident, being fit and playing with the ball, playing with your teammates. And then be relaxed — be you.”

And fly.