Ask around Manchester United about Ruud van Nistelrooy the coach and endorsements quickly come rolling in.
‘He’s obsessed,’ is how one source put it. Another spoke of how impressed they were with how he empowered those around him.
‘Ruud is an excellent coach. You can tell that he’s addicted to football,’ Harry Maguire, who will no doubt find himself quizzed this week by friends back at old club Leicester, said earlier this season.
‘He loves analysing the game. I’ve been really impressed by his ideas.’
Tongues were wagging back in his homeland when he was turning down job offers to be a No 1 at clubs such as Burnley to become one of Erik ten Hag’s assistants at Manchester United.
Initially it was a move greeted with some scepticism back home. Van Nistelrooy had been out of work for over 12 months having walked out of his job as PSV Eindhoven’s boss under a cloud.
Ruud van Nistelrooy is on the brink of the Leicester job after his exit from Manchester United
He left the Red Devils after acting as the club’s interim manager before Ruben Amorim’s arrival
Van Nistelrooy will succeed Steve Cooper (left) who was sacked by the Foxes earlier this week
The 48-year-old’s reign at Philips Stadion was overshadowed by talk of private clashes with his players, many of whom held concerns over his coaching abilities. Some felt he was stubborn and unwilling to adapt his approach.
It was a steep learning curve. Open to new ideas, Van Nistelrooy reached out to his former coach Marco van Basten for advice prior to stepping up as interim head coach at Old Trafford when Ten Hag got the boot.
Van Nistelrooy resurrected a United group down on their haunches, winning three of his four matches – including two victories over his new club – and drawing the other, after Ten Hag’s time had finished with a run of one win in eight.
He worked closely with Amad Diallo and Bruno Fernandes, both of whom shone in his short spell.
‘He wants to bring joy to the players. He brought everyone with a smile to the games, he just wanted us to enjoy it,’ said Fernandes, who scored four goals in four games under Van Nistelrooy having failed to score this season under Ten Hag.
Goalkeeper Andre Onana and Matthjis de Ligt offered similar rave reviews. Casemiro wrote a gushing goodbye to him despite saying nothing for Ten Hag. All of them desperately wanted him to stay.
What won’t be lost on Van Nistelrooy is that he is walking in to a notoriously restless Leicester dressing room that caused problems for Brendan Rodgers, Steve Cooper and Enzo Maresca.
That should be uppermost in Van Nistelrooy’s mind, though the Leicester squad also need to take a look in the mirror. They may never have bought into Cooper’s methods but if they think they can play Pep Guardiola-lite football in the Premier League as they did in the Championship under Enzo Maresca, they are foolish.
The former striker, who joined as a coach in the summer, impressed Manchester United’s players
Harry Maguire and Casemiro spoke highly of Van Nistelrooy during his interim spell
Van Nistelrooy plied his trade as a manager at PSV Eindhoven before returning to Old Trafford
Just look at Burnley, who tried to do the same under Vincent Kompany and are now back in the second tier.
Because Leicester were promoted, Maresca’s tenure has been rewritten into a schmaltzy love story that ended when the Italian joined Chelsea, leaving heartbroken players behind. Don’t believe it.
While the squad were broadly supportive of Maresca, there were definite rumblings last spring about his tactical rigidity as Leicester’s 12-point lead at the top shrunk to one. Some players expressed frustration to executives that Maresca lacked a Plan B.
They were fed up with Brendan Rodgers by the end of his reign, too – even though the 2021 FA Cup-winning manager is one of the most successful bosses in the club’s history. There is a common denominator here, and it isn’t the managers.
If Van Nistelrooy is to have any chance of keeping Leicester up, he needs to work out who he can trust both on and off the pitch and create a close, solid unit. Discard those who are not ready for the fight.
Otherwise, they will all be back in the Championship and he will probably be looking for another job.
Van Nistelrooy does not suffer such fools, and won plaudits for his work with loanees Jarrad Branthwaite and Noni Madueke at PSV, as well as playing a key role in the improvement in Son Heung-min’s finishing when both were together at Hamburg.
He is particularly keen on motivational videos, too. Before his first game as interim at United – against Leicester in the Carabao Cup – he showed United’s squad a motivational video around the ‘we’ve seen it all, we’ve won the lot’ chant.
Leicester appear to have moved quickly after sacking Cooper in the wake of their loss to Chelsea
New Manchester United manager Amorim has opted for his own coaching team at the club
There will be mutual respect between two great Premier League strikers Van Nistelrooy (left) and Jamie Vardy (right), who broke the Dutchman’s record by scoring in 11 successive games in 2015
Despite his hugely successful career as a striker for United and Real Madrid, defensive structure is also a big part of Van Nistelrooy’s coaching.
With Ten Hag still in position, Van Nistelrooy would lead on most of the secondary drills. He also created his own drills, and some of the most popular with players centred on playing out from the back.
Leicester have one clean sheet from their last eight games in all competitions and so a manager ‘obsessed with defensive structure’ certainly won’t go amiss.
United were a team 13th in the Premier League that had lost the joy of playing football – something he managed to restore in four games.
This isn’t Manchester United, it’s not PSV, but it’s the highest stakes with risk on both his and the Leicester’s side.
At least he has Jamie Vardy. Vardy is a naturally spiky character but Van Nistelrooy will have his respect instantly as a fellow Premier League great – indeed, nine years ago to the day, the Englishman broke the Dutchman’s Premier League record by scoring in an 11th consecutive game, in a 1-1 draw with United.
Both wrote their own chapters in the story of English football. Now they need to write another, this time together.
