Van Gaal rules out striker signing

Bayern Munich coach Louis van Gaal maintains he has too many strikers and that signing another is out of the question, even if one of his current crop were to be sold.

The Dutchman has Ivica Olic, Thomas Muller, Miroslav Klose and Mario Gomez on the books and, since he prefers to play with only one striker, he says he has a surplus.

“Even if I play with two strikers, I still have two too many,” he said.

“We need to sell rather than buy.”

But selling either Gomez or Klose, which would appear more likely than offloading Olic or Muller, would not necessarily mean Bayern would then make a move for Wolfsburg striker Edin Dzeko, as has been reported in Germany in the last few days.

That, after all, would still leave him with an excess of strikers, albeit with different personnel.

“I am sure that you can count,” he joked when asked about the speculation.

Yet despite the apparent plethora of forwards at his disposal, Van Gaal was only able to take a squad of 12 with him for a pre-season tournament with Schalke, Cologne and Hamburg, and that included five members of his youth team and the club’s fitness coach Marcelo Martins.

Van Gaal is still waiting for the majority of his squad to return from their post-World Cup holidays and, with Hamit Altintop, Franck Ribery, Martin Demichelis and Daniel van Buyten also ruled out, he is struggling to send 11 players out at the Arena AufSchalke.