Written by Mark O’Donnell at The Sports Quotient
Manchester United could sack Louis van Gaal. They could win the Premier League; could fall back down to seventh; could sell Wayne Rooney; could sign Cristiano Ronaldo; could end world hunger. There is no shortage of “coulds” in the life of Manchester United, because they are one of the biggest, most profitable clubs in the history of the sport run by a melange of ambitious board members and club legends and power-hungry billionaires and Ed Woodward. But not even they seem to know what they’re doing at a given moment. Currently, they might be recruiting Pep Guardiola, 44-years-young managerial legend, to replace Louis van Gaal as manager of the 2016-2017 Manchester United squad. Whether they could pull that off should be plainly obvious by now — it’s more important to figure out whether they should.
There are some obvious hold-ups to appointing Pep as the new manager of United, the primary of which is that Louis van Gaal is already there. So far LvG has taken the post-Moyes club back to its “rightful” place, earning a Champions League slot last season and likely doing it again this year. There is even not-unreasonable talk of their first title post-Sir Alex. Van Gaal is in year two of a three-year contract, and sacking the man who has rebuilt United into a true contender is more than a bit rash.
Ryan Giggs also plays an important part in this discussion. The last player standing from the famed Class of ‘92, he was already an assistant coach by the end of his playing days and took over United on an interim basis after they rid themselves of David Moyes. He’s a Red Devil through and through, and as the current assistant manager under LvG, he’s been tipped by nearly everyone as the heir to the United throne. Bringing in another outsider in Pep would definitely derail this timeline. It risks alienating Giggs, which could cause him to leave and attempt to start his managerial career elsewhere, perhaps atop the Welsh national team. Pep prefers working on year to year contracts as well, so there wouldn’t be an easy way to still set Giggs up as the successor a couple years down the line.
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