PASADENA, Calif. — Before he took his seat on the bench Wednesday night for his first game as the new manager of Manchester United, Louis van Gaal had already made an impact on the club in England.

Van Gaal, who guided the Netherlands to third place in this year’s World Cup, demanded last week that the two main practice fields at United’s training center be resurfaced with the same kind of turf used at the club’s stadium, Old Trafford. The fields are supposed to be ready in five weeks.

Van Gaal plans more substantive, revolutionary changes to the team, which is coming off its worst season since the creation of the Premier League in 1992, and his biggest change of all made its debut Wednesday night in stunning fashion. United began its tour of the United States with a 7-0 rout of Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy in front of 86,432 at the Rose Bowl.

United took the field for van Gaal’s first game in a 3-4-1-2 formation, a major deviation from the 4-3-3 identified so closely with United for decades.