Manchester United’s victory at Arsenal on Saturday had Louis van Gaal’s fingerprints all over it. United’s disciplined five-man defence and lethal counter-attacking was recognisably the same template that got Holland to the semi-finals of the World Cup.

The curious thing is that Louis van Gaal has been coaching for 30 years and before this year you would never have associated him with this type of football.

United’s football at Arsenal was a far cry from what their corporate chief, Ed Woodward, told fans to expect when he hired van Gaal last May: “If you remember Van Gaal’s Barcelona team in the late ‘90s, who played incredible, attacking football... that’s the kind of football Manchester United fans love. It’s part of our DNA.”

Saying they play attacking football is certainly part of United’s DNA. Alex Ferguson always emphasised the attacking tradition because he knew it was what supporters loved to hear. But Ferguson’s teams also knew how to defend.

Ferguson never cared about the philosophical distinctions between attacking football and defensive football. He only cared about winning football.

Hard time

Louis van Gaal used to care about the means. In his book

Biography & Vision

(2009), he wrote: “I sometimes suspect myself of being fonder of playing the game well than winning . . . . I have a hard time appreciating clubs that win with defensive play.”

These sentiments are catalogued in O, Louis, a new book about van Gaal by the Dutch journalist Hugo Borst. It's the chronicle of an obsession that began in the 1970s, when Borst was a teenager watching from the stands at Sparta Rotterdam while van Gaal, the statuesque playmaker, marshalled the midfield.

They’ve known each other professionally since 1987. But then van Gaal accused Borst of giving his number to another journalist – Borst insists he didn’t – and they fell out.

With that history, and arresting lines like: “Was van Gaal perhaps bipolar, manic-depressive, a psychopath, a borderliner, or disturbed in some other way?” you might assume the book was a hatchet job. In fact it’s a labour of love. Borst’s admiration is plain on every page.

Van Gaal is a compelling subject: a football Rasputin who won titles in Holland, Spain and Germany while developing a reputation for arrogance, pedantry, and self-destructive pugnacity. Borst canvasses Dutch public figures for insight into that awkward, passionate personality.

A comedian, Eric van Muiswinkel, tells Borst: “Those fits of temper... are for real. You can see it in his eyes. His face turns red. It’s stronger than he is, beyond his control... He’s so incredibly focused on the fact that people have no right to talk nonsense about football that he’s on the verge of exploding all the time.”

Some Dutch journalists wrote articles warning the British press to expect fireworks when Van Gaal joined United. But four months later, there have been no public sightings of Angry van Gaal. Actually, he seems rather Zen.

As Borst explains, 2014 was a year of change for the 63-year-old coach. The man who always lost his temper finally learned how to control it. Borst suggests van Gaal’s wife, Truus, played a part in that metamorphosis. She told him: if you can’t keep your cool for your own sake, then please do it for me.

Defensive football

Then there was his conversion to defensive football, which was controversial in Holland. Ever since Johan Cruyff, Holland are supposed to play a Cruyffian game – controlling the game through possession, attacking all the time. Van Gaal’s new style looked more like Italian football – let the others play, then kill them on the counter.

“The man who had once been out to perfect the art of football had now turned into a performance coach,” Borst writes. “How is such a transformation even possible for a man like Louis? “

One answer is suggested by Freek de Jonge, a popular entertainer, who argues that even as van Gaal seemed to have abandoned his lifelong football philosophy, he was, in fact, remaining true to a deeper principle. “Beauty is not an end in itself,” de Jonge tells Borst. “In football, beauty is just a way to achieve a purpose. Some people refuse to replace our romantic yearning – art for art’s sake – with realistic desire.”

De Jonge’s use of the word “desire” triggers an epiphany for Borst. “Desire! Now there’s a word that sums up this Holland team with Louis van Gaal... Desire. Holland is greedy, ruthless and rapacious. The most fouls, the fastest runs, the most spectacular goals.”

“Greedy, ruthless and rapacious” sounds just like Ferguson’s Manchester United. Who knows, this time next year Ed Woodward might be talking about how “desire” is part of United’s DNA.