There is some old footage of Louis van Gaal that tells us a lot about why the Netherlands manager always thought he could win the World Cup even while he was struggling to free himself from the grip of cancer.

It forms the opening scene of the docufilm Van Gaal, which was released earlier this year and shows him talking to a boy of 11 or 12 about the football manager he knew as “the General”.

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That man was Rinus Michels, the legendary coach of Ajax who took the Netherlands to the 1974 World Cup final and, more than anybody else, inspired Van Gaal to take up coaching.

The young boy does not mean to sound impertinent. “Johan Cruyff is the best, isn’t he?”

“Cruyff?” Van Gaal exclaims, and it is obvious it has struck a nerve. “He definitely isn’t the best. As a player, but not as a coach. In terms of results, it’s me. I won the most.”

The Dutch call it eigenwijs (self-wise). Van Gaal has always considered himself eigenwijs and, to give him his due, he can justify that view when looking around him at the house, on the Algarve coast, where he was intending to spend his retirement until giving in to his old urges and returning to manage the Netherlands for a third time.

This is where he displays all his favourite possessions from winning league titles with Ajax, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and AZ Alkmaar and, though the memories will always be tarnished, the FA Cup with Manchester United.

Yet there is something missing in the room he calls his “football den”. Van Gaal’s first stint with Oranje ended with them failing to reach the 2002 World Cup. His second involved a third-placed finish in 2014. His bronze medal is on display. One problem: bronze is not enough for a man with his record of achievement.

All of which explains why Van Gaal went back on a promise to his wife, Truus, and returned to the Dutch camp in August 2021 despite stating many times that he would never be tempted out of retirement.

Today, at the age of 71, he will become the third-oldest manager in the 92-year history of the World Cup. If the Dutch make it to the semi-finals, he will move above Oscar Tabarez, the former Uruguay manager, into second place. Otto Rehhagel, who was 71 when he managed Greece in the 2010 World Cup, edges them out by a few months.

Oldest managers in World Cup history

That, however, tells only part of the story when it comes to this bear of a man and the final act of Van Gaal’s 50-year career.

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In April, Van Gaal was a guest on a chat show, Humberto, on the Dutch television channel RTL. He has always been a good talker, never one to resort to cliches or football-speak. On that occasion, however, he dropped a bombshell. He revealed he had been having treatment for an aggressive form of prostate cancer. It was the first his players, or anyone outside his closest circle, knew about it.

“I was given special treatment in the hospital,” Van Gaal explained. “I was allowed to go in through a back door and immediately put into another room. You do, of course, tell your friends and relatives. The fact nothing came out says something about the level of trust in that circle.”

It is a remarkable story when, at the height of his illness, Van Gaal was navigating a route to the World Cup, hiding his pain and trying to suppress his worst fears, even though cancer had taken away Fernanda, his first wife, at the age of 39.

Van Gaal had 25 radiation-therapy sessions to burn that brutal, indiscriminate disease from his body. He would go straight from matches to a hospital ward, holding up his mobile phone to watch the footage on his gurney.

By the time the last qualifier came around, a 2-0 win over Norway in Rotterdam, he was in a wheelchair.

The story went that he had fallen off his bicycle and hurt his leg. What his players did not know was that Van Gaal had a catheter and a colostomy bag concealed beneath his tracksuit. They had no idea of the pain he was enduring from a course of treatment that lasted over a year. Or that he contracted pyelitis at one stage and was diagnosed with the wrong antibiotics. Van Gaal was readmitted to the hospital with a temperature of 40 degrees.

“Truus was very scared,” Van Gaal would later say, as matter-of-fact as always. “She’s not like me. I read up on the subject. I know most men don’t die of prostate cancer, at least in 90 per cent of cases. Why would I be the one to die? Just as you have to manage a football team, you have to manage this disease.”

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His documentary, directed by Dutch film-maker Geertjan Lassche, shows the moments when the news is broken to Van Gaal and the footage of him in his hospital gown undergoing the CT scan.

The film also confirms that, despite everything, Van Gaal can still be accidentally hilarious.

One scene shows Van Gaal playing golf, loudly congratulating himself for finding the fairway (“What a shot! Exactly where I said it would land. My word! Great shot, really great shot”). His swing is laboured. He is fragile. But he is trying to get on.

“The first three weeks after the radiation treatment were disastrous,” says Van Gaal, offering the documentary maker one of his wife’s homemade currant buns. “After each radiation session, I had all the possible side effects. But they’re not just due to the radiation. You also get an injection to tone down your male hormones. It completely wipes out the libido. I also have a catheter, which doesn’t help when you want to make love. But let’s continue with golf, as it’s getting rather intimate.”

In Doha at the weekend, Van Gaal could be found talking about his team’s chances of winning the World Cup and his clear belief that, yes, he has always been driven by that thought. Even when he was at his lowest, he saw the opportunity for glory ahead.

It was, in the words of the Netherlands’ Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk, a “big shock” to find out about Van Gaal’s illness. Van Dijk, as captain, said the team wanted to give him “an unforgettable World Cup”.

Steven Berghuis was one of the players who sent the coach a WhatsApp message of support. “Thank you,” came the reply. “I hope you are ready to become world champion.”

These are not empty words. Van Gaal’s record for the Netherlands, Part III, reads: played 15, won 11, drawn four, scored 41, conceded 13. It is an unbeaten sequence that suggests Van Gaal’s players have quickly bought into his methods. They have won home and away against Belgium, the nation rated No 2 in FIFA’s world rankings. Van Gaal’s team have put six past Turkey. They have scored four against Denmark, semi-finalists in Euro 2020. The Dutch are a team in form.

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As for Van Gaal, he can still be arrogant, dominant, self-assured (his own words). His philosophy remains the same — “I like structure, rules and discipline” — and there are still times when he can switch from humour to being curmudgeonly and confrontational in the blink of an eye.

Yet maybe this is also the time when we can see Van Gaal through a softer lens and recognise that, even before a ball had been kicked in this World Cup, this is already a story of competitive courage and a man who has pushed himself beyond the norm for the sake of a football team.

Truus tells the story about the occasion when her husband fixed his gaze on the doctor who was treating his cancer. It was the kind of stare many of his players will know well. Those probing, inquisitive, rheumy eyes. “Don’t forget I’ve got a training camp in five days,” came his instructions.

Would it have been less stressful to spend these days, as they had initially planned, enjoying the sunshine in Portugal, travelling to new places, feeling the sand between their toes? Of course it would have been.

That, however, misses the point that Van Gaal is fundamentally a football man down to his bones. He has been talking about retirement for 15 years and, until now, he has never been able to go through with it properly.

More than once, he told his wife he would not go back to the sport that had shaped his life. Then she would find scraps of paper on his desk where he had been writing out different team formations.

And, besides, this is not a long-term arrangement. Van Gaal will leave his role at the end of the tournament. A succession plan is already in place for Ronald Koeman to take over, 13 months after his sacking from Barcelona.

For now, however, Van Gaal gives the impression he wants to decide the final trajectory of his career rather than his last memory as a manager being his time at Manchester United and the hard-faced way he lost his job on the same weekend they won the FA Cup.

He has described the World Cup being in Qatar as “bullshit”, but it is also the tournament where he wants one last chance at glory. “In 2014 we finished third with a squad I would say was of lesser quality,” he says. “With this group, I would expect more.”

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It starts on Monday against Senegal and Van Gaal sounds like a man who thinks his life in football deserves a happy ending.

Follow the latest World Cup news, analysis, tables, fixtures and more here.

Read more: Gakpo scored again as Netherlands beat Qatar 2-0

(Top image: Photo, Getty Images; design, Sam Richardson)

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