What to expect from new Leicester boss Van Nistelrooy

As a coach, Van Nistelrooy has retained his obsession with perfection.

He became a coach in the PSV academy after retiring from playing in 2012 and was promoted to first-team manager in 2022.

Van Nistelrooy resigned in 2023 after winning the Dutch Cup and finishing second in the Eredivisie in his only season in charge – and he was not short of offers.

But, instead, he took a year out to learn from other coaches around the world at clubs such as Spanish giants Real Madrid and Argentine powerhouses Boca Juniors and River Plate.

“He’s not a proud man in that way, he’s not arrogant. He wanted to bounce his own ideas off others,” Marcel van der Kraan, sports editor of Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, told BBC Sport.

“On his dream football trip, he went to all the big games. He spoke to Martin Demichelis, the River Plate manager, for hours about coaching.

“He also went to experience the football culture. He told me he walked through La Boca in Buenos Aires and saw ‘the eternity of Maradona’ painted on the walls in tribute to the Argentina legend.

“He said, ‘You need to win the culture of an area’.”