Ange Postecoglou could be just the man for Tottenham
Ange #Ange
For all English football’s certainty that it occupies the centre of the world, it still has a problematic relationship with the parts of the game that seem new or a little too different for its liking – a long ignoble tradition of suspicion.
Perhaps little surprise then, that an Australian coach, with a Greek heritage, and a background including Japan and latterly Scotland, might find himself rejected as a potential Tottenham Hotspur manager by a section of the club’s support. Ange Postecoglou can count himself the latest in a long line of people, or ideas, that initially aroused the distrust of parts of English football – its fans, its players, its governing bodies.
Passing the ball, the organising of a World Cup finals, the televising of matches, floodlights, the organising of an European Cup, training with the ball (rather than without it), possession-based football, 4-3-3, Glenn Hoddle, the No 10 as playmaker, three at the back, Arsene Wenger. None of them passed the English smell test first time.
Postecoglou, a 57-year-old Greek-born, Melbourne-raised coach, who has been successful – and successful on his own terms – everywhere he has been, is not the problem here. The problem is an old English football fear of the new, and in particular the outsider who does not fulfil a set of nebulous criteria. The Spurs fans’ protest against Postecoglou has come freighted with the line “we deserve better”. This is a club that has won one trophy in the 21st century and was last league champions when John F Kennedy was in the White House. When it comes to what they deserve, would it hurt to be a bit more specific?
Hard to know where to start with those arguments. Much easier to look at Postecoglou’s career for signs of his suitability or otherwise, and what emerges is clear. His career is unusual by the standards of many Premier League managers, but very impressive.
He stands for something: attacking, exciting football and a refusal to compromise – as demonstrated by his decision to quit the Australia national team job before Russia 2018 on a point of principle. He got the Socceroos to the tournament having also won an AFC Asian Cup – the nation’s only major trophy outside of Oceania – having taken over just before the 2014 World Cup. His playing days were an era when the country barely had a football infrastructure.
He is a risk-taker and also an adventurer – his J-League phase redolent of Wenger’s mid-1990s career wanderings. Maybe Spurs fans are troubled by the idea of a manager from a country where football is not traditionally among the top sports. Postecoglou’s story, which is well-known in Australia, and much better now in Scotland, is more complicated. It is the timeless immigrant story. Of a culture imported from the old country, first as a way of coping with change, and then blended with the best qualities of the sporting powerhouse that is Australia.
He has talked extensively about how football helped him to adapt as a five-year-old, who had arrived with his parents and older sister by boat, none of them speaking a word of English. His father struggled to gain a foothold in the new country, having seen a successful business appropriated by the Greek state after the 1967 military coup. But father and son had a connection going to watch the local South Melbourne club, along with thousands of other Greek immigrants.
It only requires a glance at Postecoglou’s career to see that he is as steeped in the game as anyone who walks the Tottenham High Road on a matchday. Football was first, as he has said many times, with an openness one does not readily associate with Aussie sporting males, a way of bonding with a father who could sometimes be lost to the hardship of his new life. An altogether more precious thing because sometimes it had to be hidden at school amid the mainstream obsessions with Aussie Rules and cricket.
Having established his football credentials, it is worth examining his career – which like many managers without the fame earned from playing days is essentially a question of opportunity. He was briefly an Australia international. He was a successful coach at South Melbourne too. But none of that propelled him far in a nation where football coaches tended to be imported.
He has been through major setbacks including a hiatus after coaching Australia Under-20s. Then there were domestic triumphs in the A-League and yet even his Socceroos success brought no guarantee of a European club job. He was employable in Japan because they had seen first-hand what he had done with Australia in the Asian confederation.
Postecoglou has said that when his old friend and agent Frank Trimboli secured his client a video-call interview with Celtic’s owners in 2021, Postecoglou had doubts. He often sat down for these calls only for no-one to log on at the other end. This one was different.
No doubt Trimboli, an Australian of Italian heritage, and one of Europe’s leading agents, has been a strong ally – and you need those just to get a foot in the door. But Postecoglou has kept up his side of the bargain. Success and a certain style of football has followed him everywhere.
In a pre-season friendly for Manchester City in 2019, Pep Guardiola was famously impressed by Postecoglou’s Melbourne Victory side taking the majority of possession, one of two City Football Group clubs the Australian has coached. Postecoglou was appointed by Celtic during a lockdown and brought no staff of his own, preferring to work with those who were there. Having arrived when Rangers were champions, he has now – after Saturday’s Scottish Cup final win – claimed five out of six domestic trophies in two years.
This is not the orthodox career – but it is still an excellent career relative to where it started. Not every manager is fully formed in their late 30s and ready to take on the world – or just Spurs – because not every manager has the same opportunities. Sometimes, it takes a little longer, but all that experience Postecoglou has accumulated is real. Perhaps Daniel Levy will judge the Champions League winner Luis Enrique a better bet, or even Premier League old hand Marco Silva. But Postecoglou deserves his place on that shortlist. He has earned it.
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