Eight years after the biggest failure in his career, Dutch football coach Louis van Gaal tells all about what happened that fall of 2001. Van Gaal, who currently manages German team Bayern Munich, seemed headed for success with star players like Frank and Ronald de Boer, Patrick Kluivert, Phillip Cocu and Edwin van der Sar. But the 1-0 defeat against Ireland on September 1, 2001 kept the Netherlands from qualifying for the 2002 football World Cup.

Van Gaal, who by then had been successfully at coaching Ajax and Barcelona, saw his dream of becoming the first Dutch coach to win the World Cup shattered before he even reached the tournament in Japan and South Korea. In Biography&Vision, which will be published in Dutch on Thursday, the manager attributes the debacle to the unprofessional lifestyle of the international players, and implicitly, to himself.

Players prefered call-girl over a good night sleep

When he resigned in November of 2001, Van Gaal alluded to the idea that his players weren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary to be successful. But he didn't go into the kind of details that are in his new book. For instance, Van Gaal suggests that behind the fatal defeat against Ireland was a clear culture divide between the coach and his players.

"My assistant, Andries Jonker, thought I was more quiet after Ireland. Timid. I can still hear him asking: 'Louis, you're not ill, are you?' A month later: 'Louis, are you sure you are alright?' This meant I was done with the group and that attitude."

'That attitude' refers to the preference players had for leisure over training, a call-girl over a good night sleep. "Nothing actually happened as far as partying and girls are concerned, but the fact that that's what they were focused on is too crazy for words," Van Gaal writes. He reveals he hired a security guard to make sure the attempted nightly revelries remained fruitless.

Atmosphere and chemistry

Of course much of the blame for the biggest flop in the recent history of the Dutch team can be assigned to injuries and the 'nandrolon affair' - captain Frank de Boer, Edgar David and Jaap Stam were suspended for using the steroid in 2001 - but personal conflicts were also at play. The players had become self-assured celebrities over the years; they were no longer the compliant youngsters VanGaal's Ajax had earned the Champions League with in 1995. Everybody seemed to realise that, except for Van Gaal.

The biography quotes Frank de Boer who compares Van Gaal to his anti-pole, fellow Dutch coach Guus Hiddink, who had reached the World Cup semi-finals with the same generation of players in 1998. Hiddink wasn't dead set on training hard or special practices, according to De Boer. "But he made sure the atmosphere and the chemistry were right." Van Gaal's successor Dick Advocaat made it to the European Cup semi-finals in 2004 with the same crew of then 'sedated' players.

"It was the biggest disappointment of my career, mainly because these were the guys I had educated myself. It was hard to handle," Van Gaal now writes in his biography.

Dealing with large egos

Indeed, if anyone should have known the players, it was Van Gaal. He had taken many of the Dutch stars with him when he became Barcelona's coach in 1997. It was under his watch that they became the celebrities who drank more and stayed up later than their teammates in Barcelona. Van Gaal's wife even warned him about the behaviour of the players there, but Van Gaal didn't know how to handle it.

Meanwhile the Spanish and Brazilian players felt Van Gaal's collective approach of openly discussing each other's mistakes was "tough and humiliating". He coached Barcelona twice and both times left in disappointment. The same thing happened to him when he returned to Ajax as technical director in 2003-2004 and was told he was "too demanding" and "too direct in his approach".

In his biography, Van Gaal portrays himself as a fanatical top coach who lacks empathic skills. That may have been unintentional, but the stiff narrative makes him come across that way.

Dealing with large egos was never Van Gaal's strong suit. He most enjoyed working with the small-town boys from Alkmaar, whose club AZ he made the national champions last season. Van Gaal considers that prize, and the delightful football the team showed, his biggest achievement as a coach.

But he is currently trying to work with the stars again, at Bayern Munich. Luckily for him the German club is a bastion of discipline. "I can find everything that fits my standards there."