Ange Postecoglou on life, family, football and Tottenham

Ange Postecoglou’s love of football was forged as a kid driving to games with his dad. Fifty years on, he’s running one of the biggest clubs in the world and knows what his old man’s message would be: “Don’t stuff it up. Make sure you’re successful.”

Ange Postecoglou is the first Australian to hold the position of manager at an English Premier League club. He came to Australia from Greece with his parents when he was five. He was introduced to soccer a few years later at South Melbourne and it has been a part of his life ever since. We spoke at Tottenham’s headquarters in London post training. He was charming, humble, grounded, welcoming and warm.

Hamish McLachlan: Is it ever lost on you how much this game means to people?

Ange Postecoglou: In my moments of self-reflection, I realise what it’s meant to my life. All the significant relationships in my life have come from football somehow, whether it’s my friends, close colleagues, my wife.

HM: It’s been good to you, and you to it. Who introduced you to football?

AP: The old man, mate. It was so significant for me that he did because football kind of set me off on this significant path. I think football was a self-defence mechanism for him in a foreign land. He didn’t know the language, didn’t know anything about the culture. They weren’t exactly welcoming of him as an individual. And he didn’t understand the other sports.

HM: Football was a way forward for you all?

AP: Yes, a bit. How was he going to protect his son, who was only five at the time, and impressionable? How was he going to connect to his son? He loved football. He sort of got a feel for the landscape after a couple of years and saw South Melbourne Hellas was a great club and thought: “If I put my boy in there, he’ll fall in love with football like me, and that’ll be a great connection, and secondly, I know the people he’s going to be with are great people, and I’m comfortable with that.”

Ange Postecoglou says all the significant relationships in his life have stemmed from football. Picture: Supplied

HM: And he was right.

AP: He was. The friends I have today, 50 years later, are from there. That introduction was to teach me about life and hard work.

HM: As a kid, your favourite moments were when you drove to the club with just your father and you had one-on-one time together.

AP: My favourite times. It was a tough existence for immigrants coming to Australia. Australia was one of the few countries at the time who wanted immigration, and they wanted hard workers to come out and work hard. We went to Bonegilla, a migrant camp, for a couple of weeks until they found a house for us. You look back now and you realise how tough it was for him. While my life was happy, it didn’t make it easy to get close to him because he was always tired, he was always working, he was always grumpy. And rightly so, you know. I was like, “Come on, dad, let’s go out and have a kick”. But he was exhausted, so when we got to drive to the footy in the car, that was gold, mate, that was just me and him!

HM: Your view is your parents didn’t leave Greece to give themselves a better life, it was to give you and your sister a better life.

AP: Yeah, I really do believe that. Sometimes I think there’s a little misconception of people coming over and getting jobs and these riches come to them. But mostly the immigrant story is the parents sacrificing for their kids and their grandkids. If they stayed in Greece, whatever financial hardships they would have had, their life would have been better in the sense of family still being around. Socially I’m sure they would have been a lot more comfortable.

Postecoglou has made it to the top league in the world with Tottenham Hotspur.. Picture: Getty

HM: I read that when you think of your father, all you remember as a kid was him working.

AP: Yeah and probably no different than you on the farm. I’d get up in the morning and I’d have my Corn Flakes or my Coco Pops, and he was already at work, and Mum would get us off to school. He’d come home, my mum would have dinner ready, and he’d fall into the couch, and I reckon he’d watch about half an hour of telly before falling asleep! And then, he’d go again the next day and the next day.

HM: Your dad died in 2018. What would he make of all of everything here at Tottenham and the last few years at Celtic?

AP: It’s the little bit of a regret I do have – that he hasn’t seen the last few years of it all. He was there for the hard parts of the journey, and he was really proud, but I’m sure somewhere in his head, he saw me over this side of the world one day, in the Premier League, because that’s kind of what we talked about. He would have loved it. When I was coaching in Japan, my sister called me and she said, “I think you better come home. The doc says you should come back”. Dad had been through a couple of health scares. I said, “Oh, OK, I’ll do the game tomorrow night and I’ll fly home”. We played the next night and it was the most bizarre game. We ended up winning, I think, 8-2. My dad loved that. Eight goals in a game! We weren’t flying at the time as a team but, just for some reason, we clicked that night. I flew home and I got a day with him before he passed and he really perked up when he saw me. I’m glad he saw that flurry of goals. Dad did the hard yards with me, but he didn’t get to see where all his hard work ended up, but it’s a hard one when you lose a parent. It doesn’t get any easier the longer they pass. But what I do realise is that willingly or not, he’s in me. You know, I look in the mirror sometimes and I’ll make an expression, or I’ll say something, I go, “That’s not me!”

HM: That’s Jim!

AP: That’s Jim, yeah.

A young Postecoglou with his dad Jim. Picture: Supplied

HM: Do you think about him every day?

AP: Yeah. There’s always a moment where I see myself walking, or I’ll say something, and I think, “He’s here”.

HM: It’s amazing just hearing you talk about your father. It’s so similar. I grew up on a farm where if it was light, you’d go to work, and if it was dark, you’d come in. But in the end, whether you were fixing the fence or pulling up the bore, you just wanted your dad to say, “Well done, good job”.

AP: Yeah. Very rarely did it happen, but if it did, it was gold! Such a big part of my football journey, and my professional life, was his feedback, you know? There were so many times, especially as I got older, and I butted heads with him about it because I’m going, “I think I know what I’m doing by now, Dad. You know, I’ve won a few championships, I won an Asian Cup”. But he’d still be telling me what to do. But I craved it! I wanted it. And every now and then he’d say, “Yeah, well done”. And it was gold, mate.

HM: When you, I think it might have been your first press conference, were asked, what would your dad have said?

AP: “Don’t stuff it up mate!” He was just a man of his generation. Not many words, you know, not a lot of affection. I mean, you know, I kiss and cuddle my boys every day. You know, I tell them I love them. I don’t know if I’m overcompensating for the ones I missed out on growing up, but I understood at the time it’s just the way he was and how he wanted maybe his way of toughening me up. I worry about my boys, whether I’m making them too soft, by the way I kind of treat them. Whereas he was a hard man who had really sort of high standards, few words, not a lot of affection. With Tottenham, I’m sure he would have said: “Don’t stuff it up. You know what to do. You make sure you’re successful!” I didn’t need him to tell me he loved me. He showed me he did. And as I got older, I understood that he showed me because of the sacrifices he made, the hard work he put in.

Postecoglou says of his dad Jim: I didn’t need him to tell me he loved me. He showed me he did.” Picture: George Salpigtidis

HM: You met Georgia through soccer.

AP: I did. At Hellas. For a long time, my father was like a pillar for me. And now it’s almost like he handed over the baton to my wife.

HM: In what sense?

AP: There is no greater believer in me, than my wife. She’s just incredible. In the last few years, I still had doubts whether I’d get to the Premier League. I’d left Australia, we’d done well with the Socceroos and then we did well in Japan. But I just didn’t feel that I was making enough of an impact to ever get an opportunity over here. But she was so clear eyed that, “No, it’s going to happen”. We’d taken the kids out of Australia and she’d left all her family in Australia – her brother, sister, mum, all her relatives, all her friends, and she did it because she had this thing in her head that, “You know what – one day you’re going to be there. You’re going to be in the Premier League!”

HM: Have you become good at being able to manage the difference between the person, Ange Postecoglou and Ange the coach? Has Georgia or you found a way to work (through) that?

AP: Yeah, I think. Georgia and my mates let me know nothing much should change regardless of performance. The first messages I’ll get, say I’ve won Manager of the Month will be, “Mate, you’ve put on a couple of kilos. Have you seen the photo they’ve put out of you? Oh, my God, mate, what are you doing?’’ I hope I know what is important and what isn’t and what’s me and what’s not.

HM: I was watching Ted Lasso. Have you seen it?

AP: I saw the first series. I liked it.

Postecoglou has been a breath of fresh air for Tottenham in his first season in charge. Picture: Getty

HM: The line that I loved, and I thought of it when I was watching you with the players this morning. Danny Rojas – “Football is life”. The melting pot of people that you’re dealing with out there each day.

AP: Yeah, and what a great opportunity for me to kind of evolve as a person. I don’t get too close to players, you know, I’m pretty notorious for that. But just being around them, they all have a different aura and you’ll ask a question or they’ll say something and you realise that their upbringing is a world away from mine, but what a beautiful thing that we’re all in the same dressing room all with a common purpose. I love that. And football is pretty much the embodiment of it because I’ve travelled the world and there isn’t a part of it that it doesn’t touch in some respect.

HM: Are you a better manager now than you’ve ever been? Does time and mistakes and failings by default make you better?

AP: Without a shadow of a doubt. It just drives me nuts when I see clubs appointing young coaches and then sacking them because they haven’t been successful. I’m thinking, “What did you expect?’’ Look at Vossy (Michael Voss) at Carlton now. He was kind of written off, but that experience has made him a better coach. You should employ him after that, provided he’s learnt from that experience. And it’s incumbent on us to learn from our failings and their mistakes because we all make them. But, you know, the older you get, longevity in this role does give you more clarity, more wisdom, more understanding, because you’ve pretty much experienced just about everything it has to throw at you. I wasn’t equipped to handle all this even 10 years ago. The enormity of this place, the resources, the people, because it looks all great, but it’s a big operation. There’s a lot of things I’m responsible for here. I’m much more comfortable doing it today than I would have been 10 years ago. But the last 10 years have got me to this place.

HM: What do you hope all your kids have? My wife and I had this chat the other day and I settled on one word, it was just respect.

AP: Yeah, mate. You should have been in my team talk this morning. It’s exactly what I spoke about. Respect. I think if you can instil that in your children, that’ll help them in so many parts of their life. Self-respect, respecting others, whatever the journey they go on, whatever challenges they have, if they maintain that, I think it’ll hold them in good stead and it’ll bring people around them that will help them. When you are respectful and you kind of project that, it brings those kinds of people into your life as well.

HM: Australia’s unbelievably proud. Jim would be extraordinarily proud. Thank you.

AP: Thanks mate. That was fun. Thank you.

Ange Postecoglou is part of Hamish’s “Let’s Talk” content series, presented by AIA. You can watch the full interview from 4pm today at aia.com.au/letstalk

On Wednesday, May 22, Ange Postecoglou’s Spurs will play in a post-season friendly against Newcastle United at the MCG. Limited tickets are still available for purchase via Ticketek.