van Gaal: We will take a lot of youngsters to the USA

Louis Van Gaal has said that he will be taking ‘a lot’ of youngsters on Manchester United’s pre-season tour to the United States this summer.

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The United manager is keen to give the club’s youngsters a chance to prove themselves on the tour and stake a claim for a first-team spot next season. After the release of reserve team captain Tom Thorpe, some believed that youth may struggle to get a chance next year. But after giving debuts to seven academy stars last season, including Paddy McNair, Tyler Blackett and Jesse Lingard, Louis van Gaal has revealed his intentions ahead of the summer tour.

Speaking to the clubs official website, Van Gaal gave a hint of what he expects from United’s academy starlets.

"“I shall take a lot of youngsters with us to the USA”, the Dutchman said.“They have the chance to show themselves and then we shall wait and observe how they can develop. You get your chances always, especially in preseason and, when you grab that chance, you have maybe the possibility to join us next season.”"

United’s U21 squad won their league last season and although Van Gaal recognized that feat as a success, he is of the opinion that the incorporation of a youth player in the United first-team each season would be a greater achievement.

"“A championship for the second team is fantastic but I think one player every year in the first-team as a line-up player is much more important”, Van Gaal said."

There’s no doubt that this effort of Van Gaal will be a blessing for many academy products who are looking to make the grade as regular starters for United. Youngsters like Saidy Janko, Ben Pearson and Andreas Pereira have been excelling for the under 21’s and this could be their chance to take the massive leap.

Earlier, van Gaal also spoke about how their trimmed pre-season schedule this time around will help them start their Premier League campaign on a relatively sharper note.

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The Dutchman is of the opinion that the Red Devils’ hectic USA tour last season, which saw them shuttling between Los Angeles, Denver, Washington, Detroit and Miami had left them exhausted and resulted in them enduring a stuttering start.

This time around however, United will stay mainly in the Seattle and San Francisco Bay areas where they will face Club America, San Jose Earthquakes, Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain.

Speaking to MUTV, Van Gaal said:

"“When you see our pre-season last year in the United States of America, we won everything playing against big, top clubs, and then we had to play our first match against Swansea City and we lost. That cannot happen next year.“The most important aspect is building up our team with individual players so they are thinking like a team, but also we need fitness and match rhythm and therefore we have to play matches, but we also have to train also.“The problem was when we went to America [last year] we didn’t have so many times to train because we had to fly and travel a lot.“Now though, we have improved our America tour because we have two base camps and we are at the other side of America so we have lower temperatures and can build up our fitness better.“Last year we had a lot of time differences. You cannot then train your body properly. Therefore it was not good. Now we are always in the same base camps so we have no time difference and we have chosen our hotel nearby the training accommodation.“So it is now more easy to train twice a day and that is very important in pre-season.”"

It is pretty obvious that in his second season as manager of the Old Trafford outfit, Van Gaal is in cruise control of all proceedings at the club. Right from toning down the travelling during pre-season from taking decisions on who will travel on tour, it looks like the Dutchman is preparing his team for a serious title challenge whilst progressing to the latter stages of the Champions League too.

Next: van Persie calm on his future

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