The End of Louis van Gaal
Virtually all season long, Louis Van Gaal has been performing an escapology act so extraordinary that he deserves to be called Harry Houdini—or perhaps Harry Van Houdini.
Throughout a largely dismal season for Manchester United, he has seemed to be at the point of no return so often that some bookies stopped taking bets on his being sacked. And then, as if by magic, dumb luck or some last flexing of his once considerable managerial muscles, he has somehow produced a result so startling that it has been the footballing equivalent of escaping from being tied up in a bag underwater.
Probably the best example of his ability to escape certain dismissal came in the FA Cup at West Ham last month, when his misfiring side somehow shrugged off a series of poor results, including being knocked out of the Europa League by arch-rivals Liverpool, to triumph in a quarter-final replay.
Having been outplayed by West Ham in the original game at Old Trafford—they were a penalty appeal away from defeat—Van Gaal’s youthful virtuosos, particularly exciting young striker Marcus Rashford, produced probably their best display of the season to progress to the semi-final at Wembley against Everton.
Even against Everton, they could easily have lost. If Romelu Lukaku had scored his penalty, the Blues would have most likely progressed. Instead, another young forward, Anthony Martial, scored a last-minute winner (it came so late it was virtually a last-second winner) to allow United to put a poor second half showing behind them and dream of winning a record-equalling 12th FA Cup and qualifying for the Champions League by reaching the top four of the Premier League.
Their top four prospects were certainly boosted by the fluctuating league form of their city rivals in recent weeks. As if Manuel Pellegrini was putting all his eggs in the Champions League-winning basket, Manchester City produced a succession of fairly woeful performances in the Premier League, including a 4-2 defeat at Southampton and a home draw against Arsenal after they had twice led.
And so it was that on Tuesday night Manchester United returned to West Ham in the league, arriving at Upton Park late, but with their top four hopes finally in their own hands. If they won, all that would stand in their way of Champions League football was a home match against Bournemouth.
Then, perhaps right at the death, the end of Louis van Gaal’s escapology act could finally have occurred. After a poor first half display, United somehow survived the West Ham attacks (on the pitch, that is) to go ahead late on, again through the impressive Martial. However, as van Gaal himself had almost predicted before the game when he was bemoaning the absence of the suspended Fellaini, whose height is by far his greatest asset, West Ham scored two late goals to send Upton Park into ecstasy and United’s hopes of reaching the top four into limbo.
The stark situation facing van Gaal and United now is that unless Swansea beat Manchester City at home on Sunday, which is not impossible considering the two team’s recent form, they will finish outside the top four, even if they beat Bournemouth.
If that is the case, even making it a dozen FA Cup wins for United at Wembley later this month against Crystal Palace will almost certainly not be enough to save him from being replaced, most likely by José Mourinho, who has been like a bad smell hanging around at Old Trafford since being sacked by Chelsea. And then the greatest escapology act in football in recent years will finally come to an end.
Of course, every football manager has got away with something to some degree. Almost every manager who has ever achieved success of some kind has first experienced near-total failure, only surviving because of their ability to produce an utterly unexpected result. Even the great Alex Ferguson performed a Houdini routine in 1990, as the hitherto unheralded Mark Robins scored a winner in another FA Cup game at Nottingham Forest, which eventually led to Fergie winning the cup, his first trophy of many at Old Trafford.
So van Gaal’s escape act this season is not completely unprecedented. But what sets it apart from other examples of managers, like Howard Kendall at Everton in the 1980s, somehow surviving against the odds is that he has done it so often, so much so that it was almost inevitable that at some point his luck would finally run out. After all, even Harry Houdini himself finally succumbed to bad fortune, dying of peritonitis after his appendix burst, allegedly following a punch from a young student who took up his offer to hit him hard in the stomach.
Houdini had defied the odds so often that eventually he was bound to fail. Come Sunday evening, the same could be true of his footballing counterpart, Louis van Gaal.
