Australian football’s biggest feud is over after emotional moment on camera

One of the most famous rifts in Australian football has been mended in an emotional, unscripted moment caught on camera.

Ange Postecoglou and Craig Foster bury the hatchet.

The feud between former Socceroos coach Ange Postecoglou and Socceroos great Craig Foster is over.

The famous grudge has been the focal point of Postecoglou’s disappointment with Australian football — which he says drove him to quit the Socceroos before the 2018 World Cup in such a dramatic fashion.

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Postecoglou last year opened up on how his infamous SBS live TV interview with Foster in 2006 made him “unemployable”.

Postecoglou said at the time of his resignation as Socceroos boss that his interview with Foster 16 years ago has always stuck with him.

He found himself in a heated debate with Foster during a live TV segment where Foster called on him to resign as coach of the Australian U20’s youth team after failing to qualify for the U20 World Cup.

Postecoglou was ultimately sacked from the job in 2007.

Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou celebrates. Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images.

SBS football icons Les Murray and Craig Foster. Picture: Julie Kiriacoudis

Despite all the bad blood, Foster and Postecoglou came together on Monday for an interview streamed on Stan Sport where the pair exchanged kind words.

The emotions were spilling out as Postecoglou surprised Foster by commending him on the work he continues to do to advance the cause of refugees in Australia.

Foster was last month honoured with an Order of Australia award for “significant service to multiculturalism, to human rights and refugee support organisations, and to football”.

Postecoglou said: “Just off the bat, Craig, great respect for what you’re doing over there, mate, in terms of the last couple of years with the refugees.

“An unbelievable cause, an unbelievable effort from yourself, mate. Great respect.”

Postecoglou said he feels passionate about Foster’s work because of his family’s own experiences in emigrating from Greece to Australia.

He said it is one of the things that makes him proud to manage Celtic in the Scottish Premiership. The club has a proud tradition as a humble club fuelled by immigrants.

“Their whole background and why the actual club was formed, to feed poor Irish immigrants, there was a purpose behind this club that stayed with it right to this day,” Postecoglou said.

“For me, that resonates strongly being an immigrant in our own country.

“South Melbourne Hellas, Melbourne Croatia, Sydney Croatia, all these clubs were set up the same way.

“They weren’t set up solely to be football clubs, they were set up to help people adjust to life in a new land.”

Foster also spoke glowingly of the way Postecoglou has led Celtic to the top of the Scottish Premiership — highlighted by a thumping victory over bitter rivals Celtic last month.

The pair have come a long way in 12 months.

Ange Postecoglou and Craig Foster bury the hatchet.

Postecoglou said in a podcast last year his infamous interview with Foster was ultimately the catalyst for him moving to Greece for a year because he could not get a job in Australia.

“I just didn’t feel it was necessary, didn’t feel it was productive,” he said on the Shim, Spider and so much Moore podcast.

“I knew that interview wasn’t going to go well because we just failed to qualify for both the World Cups, our first time in Asia and my reasoning for doing it was trying to explain to people what was coming. Being in Asia we weren’t going to be able to roll up to qualifying tournaments like we did in Oceania.

“I didn’t think it was necessary, the accountability already stood with me, but what it did do, it did make me unemployable. I couldn’t even get an assistant coaching role.

“It was the reason I went to Greece for a year because I wasn’t going to let Australian football stop me from my ambitions as a coach. It was disheartening because I just felt everything I had done with South Melbourne as a manager had been forgotten.

“As all things with life we take our knocks and move on, and it’s safe to say it didn’t hold me back for too long.”

Postecoglou is still yet to come to peace with his ongoing frustrations towards football media presentation in Australia.

He famously said in 2017 an interview with sports commentator Peter FitzSimons was the straw that broke the camels back and prompted his resignation from the Socceroos.

“I went to do an interview on another station and the first question I was asked was ‘will you resign if you don’t beat the UAE’. And I’m kind of just sitting there and gone into a time warp of 10 years ago,” he told Fox Sports at the time.

“It jolted me a little bit. It didn’t steamroll things. The person who asked the question isn’t involved in the sport but as so often happens, I say that regularly, is a lot of people in this country when the Socceroos are playing, or it becomes a pivotal time, they glance at our game.

“They test the water by seeing what people in the game are thinking — at the time, after we drew in Iraq and I changed the formation to the three and it upset everyone in football world, which was okay with me, I kind of like that fact.

“People outside glance at the game and go ‘this is chaos’ — so that question was asked of me.

“I thought after everything we’ve achieved and the journey we’re on, qualification in our hands, I said I’m not going to go down that path again where I allow external forces to decide my fate. That wasn’t all of it but certainly a part.”

Originally published as Australian football’s biggest feud is over after emotional moment on camera