Imagine if your boss did this.
It seems that now Louis van Gaal is a dead man walking, the knives are very publicly out. In a leak to various newspapers including the Guardian and the Independent, who share near identical details, the Manchester United manager is more of a control freak than we thought.
According to the mole, Van Gaal was in the habit of humiliating the players in front of everyone by focussing in on their mistakes in games. When senior players suggested this was counter-productive and bad for moral, the manager took to emailing them individually with their errors.
But so keen was he to ensure that they fully absorbed his criticisms, that he monitored when and for how long his emails were opened, which resulted in the following comical ritual, according to the Guardian’s Daniel Taylor:
“He started sending the players individual emails detailing their faults and submitting video clips to highlight his dissatisfaction. Except by that stage a lot of the players were so disillusioned many ignored the emails or redirected them straight to their trash.
“Van Gaal suspected as much and had a tracker fitted so he could check if the emails were opened and for how long. It became a game of cat and mouse. Some players opened the emails on their mobiles, then left their phones on the side and wandered off for 20 minutes.”
The mole also suggests that Bastian Schweinsteiger and Marouane Fellaini were two of Van Gaal’s favourites and that the former was given preferential treatment, being allowed to constantly fly to and from Germany, that annoyed his teammates.
In perhaps the most ridiculous detail – and that’s saying something – there’s this about an unnamed player’s culinary failings:
“One player [asked] United’s chef to hard-boil him a couple of eggs to take home, on the basis he did not know how to do it himself”
