‘No one’s going to rate an Australian manager’: Ange Postecoglou ready to prove doubters wrong
The first Australian to ever manage a Premier League club, Ange Postecoglou has vowed to end Tottenham’s long trophy drought and insists he is the right man to turn the club around.
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He was the result of Tottenham Hotspur’s 70-day hunt for a new head coach and, with six weeks before the 2023-24 season, Ange Postecoglou has vowed to end the club’s long trophy drought.
The Spurs manager, the first Australian to manage a Premier League club, admits that while his own trophy haul with Celtic is impressive it doesn’t translate for England but he is “the right fit” to reverse Spurs’ failing fortunes.
“For me to come from where I’ve come, and be sitting here today, I needed to have that instinct to know when to move on because I’ve had to be faultless in my career to get here - that’s because no one’s going to rate an Australian manager, are they?” he told his first Spurs press conference in Enfield, north London, on Monday.
“There was an opportunity to make an impact at a football club, which I’ve done at every club I’ve been at, and I took it … I’m the right fit,” he said.
Postecoglou, a 57-year-old Greek-born, Melbourne-raised, coach, who has been successful – on his “own terms,” – in Japan and latterly Scotland, is not the problem.
The problem is an old English football fear of the new.
Acknowledging he does not have European football experience, he underlines his mantra of attacking, exciting football and a refusal to compromise.
And his decision to quit the Australia national team job before Russia 2018 on principle and getting the Socceroos to the tournament and winning an AFC Asian Cup – the nation’s only major men’s trophy outside of Oceania – speak volumes, he says.
Success at the north London club would translate to bringing it “back to where it has to be”.
“That’s why I’m here, there is an enormous challenge here and I love it,” he said, his raspy voice getting deeper.
Warning the players of imminent change amid rumours of a huge clear out of seven players - and a battle to retain striker Harry Kane as Bayern Munich pursue him, - he said “Kane is one of the premier strikers in the world and I want him involved.”
“There will be a rebuild of the team and I will do things my way to achieve big success,” he said of his plans for the new season.
“I’m different from other managers and I’ll do things my way.
“The more people buy into that the more we will get there quicker because when there is resistance it just slows down the whole process but what I will make clear is that it won’t change the process, - it might just derail it for a little bit.
“The quicker we jump on the train the quicker we all get there.”
He added: “I want to create something that will hopefully last over my tenure because I won’t be here forever.”
Replacing Antonio Conte, who officially left Spurs on March 27, Postecoglou becomes the latest manager to step in where five, including Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte, have gone in a decade without bothering the dust on the trophy cabinet.
He reckons his immigrant story fuels his drive for success and to honour his late father who sacrificed a lot when he moved his family from Athens to Australia when Postecoglou was five.
Memories of watching the Premier League at night with his father on the couch in Melbourne still dominate his mind.
“If you grow up on the other side of the world, you don’t have it (Premier League) on your doorstep so for the most part, for us, it was the English Premier League or the First Division when I was growing up and I remember Ricky Villa and Ossie Ardiles absolutely - I remember that FA Cup final absolutely,” he said.
“They were my best childhood memories, because it was me and my dad at 2am … sitting on a couch watching a game of football.
“Plenty of Tottenham teams … Glenn Hoddle’s an absolute master and those kind of players resonate around the world.
“When you’re living on the other side of the world it’s a real investment to get up in the middle of the night, it stays with you.”
“He would be overwhelmingly proud,” he added.
“It’s only as you get older than you kind of realise the impact your upbringing has on you.
“You become a parent yourself and things rattle around in your head that as a child you kind of dismiss, but he had a dream for his son and I think in his mind, provided I did what he said, I was going to reach that.
“It’s not (just) my dad. It’s my mum, my family and all the people who have made sacrifices, not just for me.
“Anyone who reaches a certain level in their profession knows they’ve done it off the back of as much off others’ sacrifices as well as your own sacrifices.
“You want them to take pride in the fact that you wouldn’t be sitting here today without their support and in my parents’ case, the sacrifices they made.”
Postecoglou, who won a domestic treble in what proved to be his final season in charge of Celtic, accepted the Spurs job after Julian Nagelsmann dropped out of the running and Arne Slot stayed at Feyenoord.
He vowed that Tottenham Hotspur will play exciting, attacking and aggressive football in 2023/24. He now has six weeks before Spurs’ opener, at Brentford on 13 August.
“I like to win, that’s the main thing, and I’ve done that wherever I’ve been,” he said.
Asked what it will take to get the season flying, he joked, “It depends how quickly the players adapt … and, to be fair, as soon I took this job, it became obvious to people that I was old so I have tried to get as many young guys around me as possible to keep me relevant.”
“I walk to this challenge fully understanding and looking forward to embracing it my way,” he added.
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