Louis van Gaal believes his words about Lionel Messi before the clash with Argentina at the World Cup were misinterpreted by the press.
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Van Gaal has spoken to Mundo Deportivo in one of his first interviews since Argentina knocked the Netherlands out of the World Cup in the quarter-finals.
He discussed the dramatic equaliser scored by Wout Weghorst after a well-worked free kick and revealed they trained it with Memphis Depay being the one to receive the ball, “The set-up was for Memphis. He moves perfectly with his back towards the opponent’s goal and had to make a feint to the left and then finish with the right.”
Van Gaal also discussed the extra time period, “The unfortunate thing was that in extra time we couldn’t keep up the pace of the last minutes of the game, when we pinned the Argentinians. We had a few injuries, so our opponent was able to recover and we didn’t get any balls in their penalty area.”
Finally, Van Gaal discussed the aftermath which saw Lionel Messi clash with the coach. Some reports say he was angry about what Van Gaal said in the run-up to the game, “I wasn’t criticising Messi at all, I just noted that in 2014 we managed to knock him out by not getting the ball to him. But the Argentinian press has misinterpreted it.”
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