By Amaechi Agbo

Former Manchester United manger, Louis Van Gaal, has explained in an interview, how he nurtured Manchester City manager, Pep Guardiola to become a coach, Bestchoicesports.com.ng can report.

Speaking in an interview recently, the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich coach stressed that when he coached Barcelona, he saw the potentials in Guardiola and immediately made him the captain of the team despite eye brows raised by people and players in some quarters.

The retired coach said that when he took over the reigns of managerial responsibilities at Camp Nau, he saw the leadership qualities in Guardiola and his ability to speak for the team and offer technical advice from time to time.

“He wasn’t the captain of Barcelona, but I made him my captain in my first year. He was always a captain on the pitch anyway – a real captain.

“Because of that, I expected he would become a coach. With Luis Enrique, I never expected he would become a coach. He was an intuition player, he didn’t speak with me about tactics.

“The players I foresaw becoming coaches were usually my captains.
A captain has to see not only his own position, but also the needs of the team. Guardiola did that.

“And when it came to tactics, he could talk for hours and hours! (laughs) He really enjoyed that. And something that I’d say about Guardiola was that he had personality.

“That’s one of the reasons I promoted him to captain. At one point the squad wasn’t satisfied that I had excluded [Hristo] Stoichkov from training with the first team, and Guardiola came to me to tell me. That took guts,” Louis van Gaal was quoted.