What does Louis van Gaal do?
From the title collector to the consultant
04/08/2025 – 2:15 p.m.Reading time: 2 min.
Louis van Gaal was once with Bayern against Inter in the Champions League final. However, he won the title with another club – for which he still works today.
Winning the Champions League is a dream of every footballer and coach. 15 years ago Louis van Gaal was very close. As the coach of FC Bayern, Thomas Müller’s sponsor and his team in the final class team were against Inter Milan. However, it was not enough to win the Henkelpott because Inter Milan won 2-0 and the dreams of the German record champion burst.
Even a year later it was the team from Italy again, on which Van Gaal and the Munich team failed in the round of 16 due to the away goal rule. Nevertheless, the Dutch shaped the time at Bayern. He won the Double of Cup and Championship with the team in the 2009/10 season.
Above all, Thomas Müller should only have positive memories of the 73-year-old. Finally, the trainer supported the then young player intensively. The sentence “Müller always plays” is one of Van Gaal’s most important. For the trainer, the Champions League title with Ajax Amsterdam, which he was able to win as a coach in the 1994/95 season, remained.
And the former player is also connected to the Dutch association. Louis van Gaal has been a consultant for Ajax since 2023. Before that, he had held other roles in the club. As early as the end of the 1980s, he started as a youth and assistant coach before rising to the head coach in 1991 and led the club to one of his most successful phases-with three championships, the victory in the UEFA Cup and the triumph mentioned in the Champions League.
In 2003 van Gaal returned again, this time as a technical director, but left the club after internal differences with the then head coach Ronald Koeman. In the meantime, he supports the association again in strategic and sporting decisions. Before that, Van Gaal was even a national coach of the Netherlands from August 2021 to December 2022 – even though he announced in 2017 not to return to the coaching bench.
The success coach said at the time: “So much happened in my family, which means that as a person you come back to the ground of the facts.” The background was that Van Gaal’s daughter’s son -in -law died. For the sake of his wife, he then took shorter from 2017 until his Dutch engagement in 2021. “Truus would prefer to spend time together and enjoy life together,” said the former coach of FC Barcelona (1997 to 2000) at the time.
At the time, as well as “Bild”, he spent his free time on the Algarve coast in Portugal. There Van Gaal is said to have his main residence and let himself go well – he has collected titles enough in his career.