Frenkie de Jong signed Louis van Gaal the day before the final group match against Qatar.
A reporter asked De Jong: “Frenkie, you look sick and look pale. Are you fit?”.
“Yes, I slept poorly and had a bit of a sore throat,” replied the midfielder, “but other than that I’m fine.”
Then the topic moved to the juniors and their influence on the hierarchy. Or so the journalists thought. Van Gaal directed the conversation to the previous comment.
“First of all, I think it’s very good that you see that Frinky is pale, I noticed that too.”
“It’s because you look really brown because you were in the pool,” was the reporters’ nightstand.
“No, I haven’t. I’m not a fan of the sun. My mother was in the coffin with a blush on her cheeks when she died. These are genes,” was Van Gaal’s somewhat apocalyptic reply.
After a short silence, he asked the question again, followed by a roar of laughter. The microphone had disappeared in the meantime, so the Dutch reporter couldn’t repeat it.
Van Gaal laughed appetizingly: “Well, then I can’t answer. This has to happen to you again.”
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