Real Sociedad winger, Adnan Janzuaj blames Louis van Gaal for his demise at Manchester United.
Januzaj faces his old club on Thursday night in the Europa League.
He recalled: “When I played my first season at United and came through the academy, people were showing me, love. The coaches were letting me enjoy my football.
‘Then obviously when a coach (Van Gaal) comes who doesn’t show you, love, it gets more difficult to prove yourself and be happy.
“When Sir Alex Ferguson was talking to us, he gave us a bit of hope: ‘Work hard, your time will come.
“Even if you had a bad pass, Van Gaal would shout at you. For young players that aren’t good, you have to teach them. A coach is like a teacher, that’s what I missed the most.
“It wasn’t only to me but also to other young players. To Memphis (Depay) also, he’s a great player and you can see he’s making a difference with Lyon in France.
“As young players, we just had to sit there and wait for our opportunity to play for 10 or 15 minutes. Okay, we can show a glimpse of our quality but you cannot show how good you are.”
A close friend of Paul Pogba and Luke Shaw, he accepts that he would have been better off playing under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer rather than Van Gaal who publicly criticized his work ethic in training.
“You can see Ole is really nice and loves the players from the academy. For young players like Marcus, they are very lucky to have a coach like that.
“When you are a young boy and you’re being criticized for things you never did – the coach’s excuse was that I wasn’t training very well – I couldn’t understand. You play like you train. If I was doing well in games, I don’t think I was that bad in training.
“People had a bad image of me and that’s the one regret, that I had a lot of people questioning my mentality.
“Van Gaal told me at the last minute that I could go on loan and I was rushed off to Germany.
“Maybe I went too early but I just wanted to play football. I didn’t want to be sat on the bench for six or seven games in a row”.
