Bayern expect top marks from football professor Van Gaal

Bayern Munich have recruited the football professor they were looking for, but new coach Louis van Gaal will be expected to get top marks from his first day in charge on July 1.

Since former trainer Jurgen Klinsmann was sacked after only ten months in charge, Bayern chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge had been scouring the continent for a top-level, German-speaking coach to help re-establish Bayern in Europe.

The English media claimed Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger was approached, but there was little realistic chance of the Frenchman relinquishing control at the north London club.

Van Gaal led AZ Alkmaar to the Dutch championship and finally won the title on April 19, while just eight days later Klinsmann was sacked by Bayern following dismal results including an unacceptably early Champions League exit.

Barcelona’s 4-0 mauling of Bayern in Spain and subsequent quarter-final defeat was the beginning of the end for Klinsmann.

For Van Gaal, a Bundesliga title will be the minimum level of success expected next season with Bayern hungry for their first Champions League crown since 2001.

“FC Bayern is a dream club for me,” said Van Gaal who has been famously quoted as declaring: “I am the best” after guiding Alkmaar to the title.

But Van Gaal will be expected to prove just that and hit the ground running at a club where failure is not an option – Klinsmann was sacked with his side third in the league and contending for the title.

“There’s a completely different mindset here at Bayern,” admitted goalkeeper Hans-Joerg Butt who reached the Champions League semi-final with Bayer Leverkusen in 2002.

“The entire club is geared towards success, trophies are all that count. You’re expected to win the league and every match, you’re not allowed slip-ups.”

Having steered Ajax to the Champions League title in 1995, the fiery Van Gaal has a wealth of experience having led the giants from Amsterdam to consecutive Dutch titles between 1994, 1995 and 1996.

Under his steerage, players such as Clarence Seedorf, Edgar Davids, Patrick Kluivert and Marc Overmars developed into world stars.

In 1998 and 1999, he also won La Liga with Barcelona before taking charge of the Dutch national side in 2000, but failure to lead them to the World Cup finals in 2002 meant he was replaced by Dick Advocaat.

Then followed brief spells back at Ajax and Barcelona, before he joined AZ in 2005 which culminated in Alkmaar winning the Dutch title just after their decisive 28-game undefeated run was brought to an end.

“You don’t find a player with anything negative to say about him,” said Bayern’s Dutch captain Mark van Bommel.

While Klinsmann was an innovator who brought language classes and buddhist statues to Bayern’s training centre, Van Gaal is a strict disciplinarian.

“Discipline is the basis for creativity,” has long been his mantra.

“I don’t want the best eleven players, I want the best eleven as a team.”

Van Gaal is not afraid to break his own rules.

After failing to lead Holland to the 2002 World Cup finals, he took a break from coaching, but when he took the Alkmaar job in 2005 he later abandoned his prefered 4-3-3 formation for a 4-4-2 approach.

As the Guardian wrote: “By relinquishing his former belief system and marrying it to a more modern approach, Van Gaal has, with AZ, reinvented Total Football. Call it Total Football 2.0, if you will.”

It worked and Alkmaar shocked both themselves and the Dutch league by going 28 games unbeaten – leaking just 22 goals all season – on their way to the title.

Only for the fourth time in the league’s history has a club other than Ajax Amsterdam, PSV Eindhoven or Feyenoord Rotterdam been crowned champions of Holland.

But while expectations have been low at Alkmaar, Van Gaal will be expected to bring more silverware to the German giants and nothing less than yet another Bundesliga title in the 2009/10 season will be good enough.