The opening scene in the 2022 documentary titled 'Louis', which airs on Amazon Prime in the UK, gives as an illuminating insight into the man as any.
Speaking to a boy no older than 12, Van Gaal appears his usual jovial self discussing with the child their shared distrust of the media. 'That is the stupid media,' the boy suggests. 'That is the stupid media,' Van Gaal agrees. 'I guess you've seen me talking about them.'
They soon, prompted by the child himself, move on to discuss the young boy's own playing exploits. 'I'm also a good player,' he tells the legendary Dutch coach.
'What position?' Van Gaal asks.
'Right-back.'
Van Gaal then stands from his chair in the studio to offer the boy a demonstration of how he wants him to receive the ball. 'Do you know what I mean?' he asks the awe-struck child, rotating and shifting his body to illustrate his point. '[Always] ready to pass the ball on.'
The anecdote is seemingly one of many that illustrate Van Gaal's obsession with the sport. It is an obsession that has carried him well. Success in Holland, Spain, Germany and England has been borne of that very fascination.
It is that fascination, that very will to win that has led Van Gaal to this point. He has suffered from an aggressive form of prostate cancer, going through 25 bouts of brutal radiation therapy, yet is about to embark on his second World Cup campaign in charge of the Oranje. His third stint in charge of the team in total.
It is likely to represent the 'last dance' for a coach who has been at the forefront of the sport for three decades.
His arrival during the 1990s with Ajax hailed in a new era of Dutch football. One so glorious that Van Gaal himself found legitimacy in taking on the country's football hegemony, notably Johan Cruyff. It was a feud that came not to dominate Holland but also Spanish and wider European football. It spoke simply to the Titantic nature of both men, neither willing to relent on their steadfast position.
An unspectacular midfielder, Van Gaal never hit the heights of his peers. Cruyff became Cruyff, meanwhile players like Johan Neeskens, another midfield darling of the country's booming football output during the mid-to-late 1970s, also far out-stripped his playing career. Revealing perhaps where his priorities lay, Van Gaal says in the documentary that he first began thinking about coaching when he was just 15.
It has long been speculated as a reason for what many saw as bitterness on Van Gaal's part when he sought to take on the established wisdom of Cruyff during the 1990s.
'Cruyff is the best, isn't he?' the young boy asks Van Gaal, to nervous laughter from a background crowd in anticipation watching on.
'Cruyff?' Van Gaal responds incredulously. 'He definitely isn't the best. As a player, but not as a coach.'
Aloysius Paulus Maria van Gaal was born in August 1951 in Amsterdam to a country still ravaged by the events of the Second World War.
It had, as with all of Europe, gutted the Dutch economy and it had become a country - after centuries of colonial exploration and outward confidence - unsure of itself. Mass emigration of the country followed, with over 500,000 leaving in the 1950s alone. The prospects of far flung destinations such as the US or Australia seemed preferable to a country - and continent - still drowning under the shadow of what had come before.
The sense of self that so many European nations lacked in the years following the war was equally felt in Holland. The heart of its population, the Jews of Amsterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven and Rotterdam among other cities, had been ripped out. Three quarters of all Jews living in Holland were killed, a greater proportion than any other sizeable European nation. Such an impact on the generation of Van Gaal was seemingly profound.
Van Gaal describes a happy childhood, but when one delves deeper questions do begin to arise. The man himself talks openly about the difficult relationship he had with 'strict' disciplinarian, his father. He died when Louis was only 11, the youngest of nine children.
That discipline is what Van Gaal credits with being responsible for his brutal honesty. It has come to define not only his character but also his management style. This summer, Van Gaal admitted he had told players not to leave the Eredivisie should they want to be selected for this winter's tournament. A few heeded the advice; one who didn't, Ryan Gravenberch, who joined Bayern Munich, was controversially left out of the squad.
The Dutch national side of the 1970s, which reached two World Cup finals, losing both in extremely controversial circumstances, achieved that sense of self through its revolutionary 'Total Football' style and typically brilliant - but often unusual - players. Prior to their World Cup final date with West Germany in 1974, it was reported - to the horror of the Dutch side themselves - that they had been enjoying naked pool parties with local women in their hotel.
David Winner, author of Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football, said: 'In Britain, there’s pop music which is suddenly important with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and so on. And in Holland, it’s more to do with footballers. Cruyff is the equivalent of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Personality-wise, Cruyff is more John Lennon.'
One only has to look at the gilded status the Beatles still hold across cultural life in Britain today to understand the equal importance of Rinus Michels, Cruyff and the rest of the Dutch football innovators of the 1970s in their native state.
It therefore speaks to the kind of man Van Gaal is that when he arrived in the 1990s at Ajax, a club without a European crown since their last with Cruyff in 1972/73, he was willing to challenge the previously unchallengeable.
'Van Gaal has a good vision of football, but it is not mine. He wants to gel winning teams and has a militaristic way of working with his tactics,' Cruyff said of Van Gaal. 'I want individuals to think for themselves.'
His way was not the Dutch way. The 3-1-2-1-3 was a distinction from the previously well established 4-3-3-ish system so synonymous with Ajax and Dutch football in general.
His breaking with convention brought through one of football's most talented ever generations. The mere list of Van Gaal's squad for the 1995 Champions League victory over AC Milan reads like a who's-who of football greats.
Edwin van der Sar, Danny Blind, Frank Rijkaard, Ronald and Frank de Boer, Clarence Seedorf, Edgar Davids and Patrick Kluivert. Plus Marc Overmars and Jari Litmanen. It was a genuinely revolutionary side led by a revolutionary coach.
The sense with Van Gaal has always been he is a man with steadfast ambition who will stop at nothing in the pursuit of success. The sheer number of fallings out he's had with other figures within the game is testament to that.
Gus Thys, Ronald Koeman, Hristo Stoichkov, Rivaldo - 'I don’t like Van Gaal and he doesn’t like me' - but to name a few.
His falling out with Rivaldo came much to dominate his first period at Barcelona in which he won two league titles and the Copa del Rey. The Spanish media did not take to him particularly kindly - similar, in many ways, to how he had been seen by his own native media in 1991. 'Arrogant,' De Telegraaf labelled him when he took the Ajax job.
After the weight of the job and the cultural differences became too much, Van Gaal departed in May 2000. The Holland national team job was his next appointment though that soon ended in disaster when the country failed to qualify for Japan and Korea 2002.
The Dutch public queued up to criticise Van Gaal. 'Arrogant' and too stubborn were criticisms labelled at him. Perhaps true but such was not going to sway Van Gaal from his own beliefs.
'Who is the best coach?' the boy asks him.
'In terms of results, it's me. I won the most prizes,' Van Gaal responds.
That combativeness and belief in one's own principles has been evident in the lead up to Qatar, with Van Gaal having got into something of a war of words with the host nation over the World Cup. First, saying that compensation funds for workers impacted by the preparations for the tournament should be set up.
Then, on the eve of the tournament, declared it right that Dutch fans were boycotting the World Cup. 'They are right to do that,' he said. 'But I hope we play so well that at the end of the tournament when we play the final, they'll be watching on TV how good we are.'
His redemption thereafter came to make Van Gaal as much as his formative experiences at Ajax and thereafter, Barcelona. His second spell in Catalonia was again marred by internal conflict but this time there were no major prizes to offset the off-field problems.
On he went to AZ Alkmaar, a relative minnow of Dutch football - they had only won one league title when Van Gaal pitched up in 2005 - that allowed the coach to rebuild his career with little outside interference. Van Gaal was, in the inverse of the traditional cliche, bigger than the club. Success followed. They finished 2nd, 3rd then 11th, leading to Van Gaal being on the verge of moving on before being convinced to stay by the players themselves.
In his final season, the club won its first league title since 1980-81. 'It's incredible what we've achieved. The other clubs, Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord, have a much higher budget. We've had to make due with lesser players and lesser means,' he said.
'This is great for the players. For me, personally, this championship will be my greatest little masterpiece.'
Onwards he went to Bayern Munich. The first season saw him qualify the side for the final of the Champions League, his first since 1996 which Ajax agonisingly lost to Juventus on penalties.
Defeat against Jose Mourinho's Inter Milan at the Bernabeu failed to cap what had been an impressive first campaign in which they had won everything there was to win. A year later, after some further internal wrangling, he was off again.
He returned to the Netherlands job after 12 years away having previously not qualified them for the World Cup. He found no such difficulties in 2012, taking them to Brazil in 2014 where they came within a penalty shootout of reaching a second consecutive World Cup final, having previously not reached one since 1978.
Manchester United then came calling in what many thought would be his last major management job. It was an interesting time in which he endeared himself to the fans through a number of funny moments - 'Louis van Gaal's army', 'sexual masochism' - but struggled to convince them that their often tepid brand of football was the right way to go.
He would depart after lifting the FA Cup in 2016.
He retired in 2017, declaring the reasons because of 'family'. Later, he would say that it was merely a sabbatical before officially bringing the curtain down on a remarkable career in 2019. But the football obsessive just could not resist.
In 2021, the Oranje came calling again. Failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, having missed out on the Euros in 2016 - the first time they had failed to qualify for the tournament since 1984 - had the national FA panicking.
'Dutch football has always been close to my heart and national coaching is in my view a key position for the further advancement of our football.
'Moreover, I consider it an honour to coach the Dutch national team. There is little time for the next qualifying matches, which are immediately crucial for participation in the World Cup.
'The focus is therefore immediately 100 per cent on the players and the approach. After all, I was appointed for that,' he said.
And so began his third - and, you'd think - final reign as Dutch coach. Different to the previous two in that Van Gaal has battled prostate cancer, something he hid from his players.
'In each period during my time as manager of the national team I had to leave in the night to go to the hospital without the players finding it out until now, while thinking I was healthy, but... I am not,' he said.
'I think you don't tell people you work with like that because it might influence their choices, their decisiveness. So I thought they shouldn't know.
'You don't die from prostate cancer, at least not in 90 per cent of the cases. It is usually other underlying diseases that kill you,' he added in the typically brash Van Gaal style.
'But I had a pretty aggressive form, got irradiated 25 times. Then you have a lot of management to do in order to go through life.'
So begins what many expect to be the Dutchman's last tilt at management. 'Have you got any ambitions to coach again?' he is asked in the documentary prior to taking the Dutch job again.
'No, I don't think so. But you can never exclude the possibility.'