Come on, let's do some soccer fiction. What would have happened if at one point in their professional careers Lionel Messi and Louis van Gaal had met in a locker room as a player and as a coach? Would it have happened to the Argentine like Rivaldo? Would the authoritarian Dutchman have condemned the band like a post, as happened with the Brazilian? Or would he have let him have freedom of movement like no other footballer under Van Gaal's orders?
We will never know because the former Barça coach is over 70 years old and is about to hang up the blackboard and because Leo does not have much reel left before parking his boots. But what is likely is that their relationship, if it had happened, would have caused rivers of ink to flow because the striker, like all geniuses, has never been easy to get along with and because the coach has never been characterized by his flexibility. . When Van Gaal left Barcelona in his second spell, Messi was already in grassroots football but he was still a child.
They have been rivals, as in the semifinals of Brazil 2014 (Argentine triumph on penalties) and they will be again this Friday in the quarterfinals in Qatar. Both on their last great mission. On the 10th to continue feeding his dream of leaving through the front door and pulling the cart of a team that marches in fits and starts, with suffering, between its hopes and its ghosts. The coach to enlarge a curriculum that he used to boast at the end of the 20th century but which declined in his autumn years.
The two have their character, Leo's more introverted and Louis's more bombastic, but they are seen enjoying this World Cup campaign like never before. Messi being more aware that he has to suck every last drop of his life in the elite. Van Gaal reinventing himself, collecting praise, building another 'oranje' team (less academic and more pragmatic) and even dancing on his return to the hotel to celebrate his classification against the United States. Both will want to set a chair.
