It was one of the more dramatic moments from the World Cup. Lionel Messi swaggering towards Netherlands dug out where Louis Van Gaal and his assistant coach Edgar Davids were standing....CONTINUE READING
Messi would gesture with his fingers that Gaal had mouthed off too much before the game, and even as Davids would place his hand on Messi’s back to calm him down, Messi would lean in to say more words at Gaal who listened but didn’t say a word.
Now, days after, Gaal has broken his silence on the episode.
“I wasn’t criticizing Messi at all, I just noted that in 2014 we managed to knock him out by not getting the ball to him. But the Argentinian press has misinterpreted it,” he told reporters back home.
A day before the game, Gaal had said: “Messi is the most dangerous creative player, he is able to create a lot and to score goals himself,” Van Gaal said. “But when they lose the ball and the opponent has possession he doesn’t participate much, and this gives us chances [to exploit].”
When Messi confronted with Louis Van Gaal and Edgar Davids after the match
With the desi swag of “Gangs of Wasseypur”. #Messi #louisvangaal #edgardavids #argvsned pic.twitter.com/lc5PF72vYo
— Biswarup Ghatak (@BishOnTheRockz) December 10, 2022
Argentina’s coach Leo Scaloni had explained Messi’s angry gesture thus: “I think Leo felt touched by Van Gaal’s words. He said we would play with one man less without the ball, but Messi showed who is the best of all time. We are happy to have him with us.”
It was a match filled with squabbles and the referee unleashed 18 yellow cards. At the end of the game, Messi featured in another viral episode. When Wout Weghorst came over to Argentine camp to shake hands and bury the ill-feeling on field, Messi wasn’t in any mood for reconciliation.
“What are you looking at, fool? Go away,” Messi said on live television. A quote that has already becoming part of the football pop culture with coffee mugs and T-shirts being printed in Argentina with the original quote in Spanish, “Qué mirás, bobo? Qué mirás, bobo?… Andá para allá”. Later, Weghorst had to told to leave the area by Messi’s former team-mate Aguero.
Later, Weghorst would say: “I wanted to shake his hand after the game. I have a lot of respect for him as a football player, but he threw my hand to his side and did not want to talk to me. My Spanish is not very good, but he said disrespectful words and that disappoints me.”
Netherlands were ousted out of the tournament by Messi’s Argentina and Van Gaal once again reiterated how proud he was with his team’s performances in the last two world cups.
”In both we lost on penalties, but during the 90 minutes and extra time nobody beat us.”
Incidentally, Edgar Davids wears glasses in the sidelines as he suffered from glaucoma during his playing days, and been using them since his surgery in his right eye in 1999. Glaucoma is a chronic, progressive eye disease caused by damage to the optic nerve, which leads to visual field loss.
Gaal explains Netherlands’ wonder lab goal of Weghorst
Just before the end of the regulation time, during a free kick, Teun Koopmeiners would bewilder the Argentine wall by tapping the ball gently to Wout Weghorst, who would turn, control the ball to slap in a wonder goal.
Van Gaal has now revealed that they had practiced that goal for Memphis Depay but since he had been substituted, Weghorst took over. “The set-up was for Memphis. He moves perfectly with his back towards the opponent’s goal and had to make a feint to the left and then finish with the right.”
