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| Version 1 | Version 2 |
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| Radamel Falcao says knee injury won’t hamper Manchester United career | Radamel Falcao says knee injury won’t hamper Manchester United career |
| (about 3 hours later) | |
| After all the questions had finished, Louis van Gaal rose to his feet, held out his hands and asked the audience to show a little appreciation for the Hollywood-handsome guy in the next seat. “What do you think about his English, hey?” the Manchester United manager wanted to know. “I had the same situation in Spain [with Barcelona]. In my first year I spoke English, in my second year Spanish. And he is coming here, and he is speaking English for you straight away.” He and Radamael Falcao appreciated the polite ripple of applause, from a press corps who had spent seven years waiting for Carlos Tevez to try a few words of English. | |
| Falcao had passed the test with distinction, stumbling only once when a question came from a Spanish journalist and his interpreter had to help him find the right words for “style of play”. Yet the real examination had come earlier in the day when he met his team-mates for the first time on the pitches at Carrington. | |
| As Van Gaal explained, these are changing times for United, with six players arriving and 19 heading out, leaving what the manager described as a “new hierarchy in the dressing room”. For someone, perhaps, with lesser talent, it might have been a daunting experience. Falcao announced his arrival like a superstar. “He gets one ball and it was in the goal,” Van Gaal recounted. “This is one of the best strikers in the world. He confirmed it in his first training session with me.” | |
| Briefly, Van Gaal checked himself, pointing out that maybe that kind of rich acclaim would “put too much pressure” on his new player but the man sitting directly to his left did not look the slightest bit fazed. Falcao was clear that he wanted to be at Old Trafford for “many seasons”, rather than just the one stipulated in his loan arrangement from Monaco, and there were reassuring words about his left knee, half a dozen games into his comeback from the ruptured ligaments that kept him out of the World Cup. | |
| “I feel well,” he said. “I started to play two months ago with Monaco and I’ve improved a lot in the last month. I have scored goals [three in 217 minutes], which is important to strikers, and I’m confident with my physical form. I am comfortable with my knee.” | |
| For now, he is staying at a hotel on the Manchester-Salford boundary, along with Van Gaal and the club’s other signings. Daley Blind was talking at the same press conference and Luke Shaw and Marcos Rojo could make it a quartet of debuts in Sunday’s game at home to Queens Park Rangers, when there will also be a first appearance at Old Trafford for Ángel di María. | |
| “There are a lot of new faces and it’s a period where people will need to get to know each other,” Falcao said. “However, you are talking about a lot of top-quality players who are all very intelligent so I’m sure they are bright enough to assimilate any plans or tactics the manager has in mind and however he wants to set us up.” | |
| Whether Van Gaal intends to continue with his 3-4-1-2 formation might become clearer when he holds his regular press conference on Friday to preview the match. His squad have a lopsided feel, overloaded in attack but thin in defence, and again there was the sense that Juan Mata might be vulnerable as Van Gaal promised to trust the club’s youth. | |
| Adnan Januzaj is one of them and then there is James Wilson, the teenage striker who might have been in Van Gaal’s thinking when he bluntly explained why he had not considered Danny Welbeck was good enough and thought others could make a better fist of it. What it was not, Van Gaal emphasised, was a sign that Robin van Persie might be on the wane, adding that the Dutch striker was “fitter than I’ve ever seen before”. | |
| So, how did he intend to fit in all these players? “It is not so difficult,” he said. “But we also need the youth education. That is the policy of Manchester United. It’s, of course, more risky but I think it’s the only way to do it. I’m always willing to give young players their chance but they have to take the chance. The question is whether they take the chance? I cannot do that for them. They have to do that by themselves but the possibility is there and all the youngsters have to know that. And I believe that Manchester United came to me because of that.” | |
| More than anything, they approached him because of his reputation as a serial trophy-collector and a fully fit Falcao should evidently make that process easier. | |
| “I hope to make history in this club,” the Colombian said. “When I was at Porto and Atlético Madrid I always want to improve and I dreamed about playing in a team like this, and now I want to stay here for many years.” | |