Just two weeks after leaving Old Trafford, Ruud van Nistelrooy is back in business.
The Dutchman has been announced as the new Leicester manager, 18 days after completing an interim stint as Manchester United’s head coach and five days after the Foxes sacked Steve Cooper.
Leicester fans and players have already seen plenty of Van Nistelrooy this season. Two of his four games in charge at Old Trafford were against the Foxes – a 5-2 Carabao Cup win and 3-0 victory in the Premier League.
The 48-year-old led United between the departure of Erik ten Hag at the end of October and the arrival of new boss Ruben Amorim on 10 November.
He had only rejoined United as an assistant coach in July on a two-year deal, but wasn’t given a backroom role under Amorim, and now resumes his fledgling managerial career at 16th-placed Leicester.
They have swapped the experience of Cooper for a manager who has only led at senior level for one season at PSV.
It may seem a risk, but those who know Van Nistelrooy say he is “driven”, “strong-willed” and “obsessed with perfection”.
A player ‘always looking for an edge’
United bought former Netherlands striker Van Nistelrooy for £19m from PSV Eindhoven in 2001 and he scored 150 times in 219 games before he was sold to Real Madrid in 2006.
Ex-United coach Rene Meulensteen remembers a player “determined to succeed” who was “always looking for an edge” over opponents.
Meulensteen was overseeing United’s reserves in 2005 when, after successful one-on-one work with the Red Devils’ Uruguay forward Diego Forlan, he was sought out by Van Nistelrooy.
“I said to Ruud, ‘Opponents will start to analyse you. You are very direct in your approach so sometimes in games you need to take that extra touch just to shift the angle of your finish’,” Meulensteen told BBC Sport.
“We worked quite a bit on that and, as ever, he was focused and disciplined, trying to add to his game and be a success.”
The trip to Argentina to learn as a coach
As a coach, Van Nistelrooy has retained his obsession with perfection.
He became a coach in the PSV academy after retiring from playing in 2012 and was promoted to first-team manager in 2022.
Van Nistelrooy resigned in 2023 after winning the Dutch Cup and finishing second in the Eredivisie in his only season in charge – and he was not short of offers.
But, instead, he took a year out to learn from other coaches around the world at clubs such as Spanish giants Real Madrid and Argentine powerhouses Boca Juniors and River Plate.
“He’s not a proud man in that way, he’s not arrogant. He wanted to bounce his own ideas off others,” Marcel van der Kraan, sports editor of Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, told BBC Sport.
“On his dream football trip, he went to all the big games. He spoke to Martin Demichelis, the River Plate manager, for hours about coaching.
“He also went to experience the football culture. He told me he walked through La Boca in Buenos Aires and saw ‘the eternity of Maradona’ painted on the walls in tribute to the Argentina legend.
“He said, ‘You need to win the culture of an area’.”
Investment in youth before PSV exit
So, what might Leicester fans expect from a Van Nistelrooy-led side?
“His style of play was very realistic, not naive,” said Van der Kraan. “I won’t say it was super attacking, but there was venom in the side.
“To sum him up as a coach, he probably got more joy out of improving players than of winning trophies.
“Ex-PSV youth star Xavi Simons, now on loan at RB Leipzig from Paris St-Germain, said Van Nistelrooy taught him everything.”
Although Van Nistelrooy won two trophies and secured Champions League qualification in his debut season, he resigned with one game left.
“There was a breakdown in the relationship between him and the assistants,” added Van der Kraan. “He stuck to his principles.”
De Telegraaf claimed at the time that six players had reported their dissatisfaction with Van Nistelrooy to the PSV board.
‘Van Nistelrooy could have been at Burnley’
BBC Sport chief football news reporter Simon Stone:
Van Nistelrooy could have been forgiven for regretting returning to Manchester United given how short his stint was back at Old Trafford. But it turned out to be an astute move.
Had the former PSV Eindhoven boss not answered the call from fellow Dutchman Ten Hag, he could well have been plotting a promotion campaign at Burnley.
Instead, he is taking the direct route back to the Premier League with Leicester. It is probably too simplistic to say Van Nistelrooy has got the job because of the two wins he managed against the Foxes while in interim charge, but it can’t have done any harm.
He dealt with the media well, is clearly focused on game day – judging by the number of times he strays into the opposition technical area – and exudes a calm authority.
Leicester must hope he can have the same kind of impact at the King Power as he had at United.
Some sections of this article were originally published in October.