Di Maria and Van Gaal’s bitter feud explained ahead of World Cup clash

Manchester United fans heckle PSG's Angel Di Maria

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Angel Di Maria and Louis van Gaal are set for an awkward reunion ahead of tonight’s World Cup showdown between Argentina and the Netherlands. The duo previously worked together at Manchester United for a year but, after falling out behind the scenes, the forward was sold to Paris Saint-Germain. Express Sport will now take a look at their feud, why things went wrong and what they’ve said about each other in the years since.

Back in the summer transfer window of 2014, United decided to go down the Galactico route as they looked to put the nightmare David Moyes era behind them.

And with Di Maria deemed surplus to requirements at Real Madrid, the Red Devils forked out a huge £59million to bring the Argentina international to the Premier League.

Initially, things went well. Di Maria scored a memorable lob against Leicester, even if United slumped to a 5-3 defeat at the King Power Stadium.

But after a break-in at his family home, the current Juventus star was unable to rediscover his best form.

Di Maria would end up being sold to PSG after just a year in England and is remembered these days as one of the biggest flops in United’s entire history.

And, speaking afterwards, the forward criticised Van Gaal and insisted their relationship never recovered after they had an argument behind closed doors.

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“I was in Manchester and everything was fine with Van Gaal for the first two months,” Di Maria said.

“After a fight, things weren’t the same. The relationship was not the same. The fight with Van Gaal happened because he was always showing me bad and negative things and all of that was holding me back.

“One day, I fought with him. I told him that I didn’t want to see those things anymore, that I was doing good things and asked him why he didn’t show me good things.

“He didn’t like the way I talked to him and from there the whole problem started.”

Last year, Di Maria added: “My problem at Manchester was the manager.

“Van Gaal was the worst of my career. I was scoring, assisting and the next day he was showing me my misplaced passes.

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“He moved me from one day to the next, he didn’t like players being more than him.”

Even Di Maria’s wife slammed his spell at United, with Jorgelina Cardoso stating she wanted to ‘kill herself’ due to the way their life in Manchester panned out.

She said last year: “Angel came to me one day and said: ‘Look at this proposal from Manchester United’.

“I didn’t want to go, I told him to go alone. ‘Let’s go both of us’, he replied. It was a lot of money, more than the Spaniards had offered.

“So, we went. If you work in a company and someone offers you double the salary, you go running.

“We were friends with Gianinna Maradona, Sergio Aguero’s wife, and we travelled to Manchester on vacation for a year.

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“It was always horrible! We came home and I said: ‘If you’re ever transferred, make sure it’s anywhere in the world but England.'”

She added: “I didn’t like it at all… I can tell you.

“People are all weird. You walk around and you don’t know if they’re going to kill you.

“The food is disgusting. The women look like porcelain.

“Angel and I were in Madrid, at the best team in the world, perfect food, perfect weather, everything was perfect. And then came United’s proposal…

“I told him ‘no way, no way’, but he kept saying we will be a little more financially secure and we have to go. We fought about it… We try to be closer when things go wrong.

“I don’t blame him for going there. It was horrible, so horrible. I just told him, ‘Darling, I want to kill myself, it’s night time at two o’clock.'”

Van Gaal previously said Di Maria couldn’t adapt to life in England. The Netherlands boss stated: “Di Maria had a problem with English football culture and the climate.

“You can’t buy players and know , with certainty, that they can deliver. You cannot know because football is a team sport.

“I always ask a player where he wants to play. For him, it was the wing, wide and especially on the left. In the Argentina team, he plays on the left. I started with him there. He was not performing very well, at a level you would expect from an £80million player.”

And Van Gaal, speaking before the Netherlands’ clash with Argentina, shrugged off Di Maria talk by saying: “I don’t like it that Angel said that, it’s a pity. But sometimes a head coach has to take decisions that don’t always end well.

“He (Di Maria) is one of the very few players who has ever said that, normally it’s the other way round.”

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