Louis Van Gaal and Jose Mourinho are always criticised as the two coaches who came to Manchester United and neglected the youth system of the club to focus more on marquee signings.
The premise of this argument is centred on the fact that when Louis van Gaal replaced David Moyes in 2014, one of the first things he did was to break the transfer record of the club by signing Angel Di Maria for £59.7 million.
Despite the amount of money the coach spent on bringing big names to the club, it didn’t achieve much compare to legendary coach Alex Ferguson who won a lot of titles using mostly Manchester United academy players.
Van Gaal was sacked in 2016 and was replaced by Jose Mourinho who also followed the precedents of the Netherlands tactician by breaking the transfer record of the club yet again.
But this time around, Mourinho did not only break the transfer record of Manchester United, but he also set a new world transfer record by signing Paul Pogba from Juventus for 89.3 million in 2016. The world record has since been broken by Neymar’s €222 million move from Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain in 2017.
This was why some pundits and supporters of Manchester United believe that Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho disrespected the club during their time at Old Trafford.
However, those critics always fail to mention that Van Gaal picked Marcus Rashford from the club’s academy and made him what he has become today while Mourinho picked Scott McTominay from the same academy.
Comment on Louis Van Gaal and Jose Mourinho is harsh
In the light of this, Manchester United‘s head of first-team development Nicky Butt who served under the two coaches, argued that it was a myth that Van Gaal and Mourinho disrespected the club.
While taking part in MUTV Group Chat recently Butt said: “I think it’s harsh on van Gaal and Mourinho, and David Moyes to a point, because they didn’t come into Man United and go, this is it, move it all to one side, disrespect Manchester United and we’ll do it this way.
“They didn’t. They never did – it’s a myth that they did.
“Mourinho was brilliant with me. He spoke to me every single day at breakfast and asked about the kids. He did a few meetings with the kids when they were going to Portugal [in the UEFA Youth League] and telling them what to expect and so on.”
Butt however added that he is enjoying life under the current coach of the club Ole Gunner Solskjaer than under Solskjaer’s predecessors.
