Ange Postecoglou won’t be defined by win or loss in Tottenham’s Europa League quarter-final

Win in Frankfurt and Tottenham Hotspur can still aspire to the trophy that may earn Ange Postecoglou a third season. Lose, and the defining job of his career may be doomed.

IT began half a century ago on the windswept terraces of Middle Park stadium, on the southern edge of the world, where the coastal breeze would carry the wafting scent of souvlaki: a life in football that eventually would take Ange Postecoglou back to the continent he left as a child.

What looms today (Thursday), in a stadium encircled by a German forest, may be the biggest game of that life. Win in Frankfurt, pull off the result of the season, and Tottenham Hotspur can still aspire to the trophy that may earn Postecoglou a third season. Lose, and the defining job of his coaching career is doomed to end in failure.

Ange Postecoglou during a training session in Frankfurt. Picture: Crystal Pix/MB Media/Getty Images

The stakes are immense. It took Postecoglou 30 years of hard, patient graft at his vocation to earn this chance, and the Europa League is now the single thread by which it hangs.

And yet, on the eve of the second leg of this quarter-final tie, he was able to exude a pugnacious serenity.

“I don’t define my career by what people think about me,” he said. “Never have, never will. If you don’t think I’m a good coach today, you won’t think I’m a good coach tomorrow, even if we win. One game ain’t going to make a difference to that. I couldn’t care less. Really, I couldn’t care less.

“There’s no burden on me, there’s no anxiety. We’ve got a great opportunity to get to the final four of a major tournament and, mate, I’m not going to let that slip by without fighting tooth and nail for it.”

Ange Postecoglou at the beginning of his coaching journey with South Melbourne in 1996. Picture: Supplied

His task has been complicated by the loss of the captain, Son Heung-min, who has been unable to shake off a niggling foot injury.

“He has been battling with it for a few weeks now, but it’s got too painful over the last few days,” Postecoglou said. “It’s a blow but we’ve had these challenges all year.”

It has been a terrible season for Tottenham. Defeated 17 times in the Premier League, the growing likelihood is of finishing ten or more places worse than last season.

After a terrible season to date, Tottenham’s task in Frankfurt has been made that much harder by the loss of Son Heung-min for the second leg. Picture: Rob Newell – CameraSport via Getty Images

Barely scraping past Tamworth in the FA Cup, then losing to Aston Villa at the next hurdle.

A decent campaign in the Carabao Cup, spoilt by that deflating 4-0 loss to Liverpool in the second leg of the semi-final.

And now the boomerang that Postecoglou threw in September, when he said he always wins something in his second year, is coming back at him hard and fast. Still, he stands there unflinching, backing himself to catch it.

A dejected Ange Postecoglou Carabao Cup semi final loss. Picture: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images

Could he? Because Tottenham really didn’t play badly in last week’s first leg, against the side third in the Bundesliga. They were much the better team.

They held Dino Toppmoller’s men to 0.3 expected goals, Eintracht’s lowest figure of the season. They could easily have scored from one or two of their second-half chances and won.

For the first time in months, Postecoglou’s football made sense: the balance between attack and defence held, they created a steady flow of chances, and the goal came from one of the full backs, Pedro Porro, getting in the sort of inside channels that “Angeball” is configured to put them in.

Then they went to Wolverhampton Wanderers on Sunday and conceded four.

Micky van de Ven, left on the bench at Molineux, will surely start alongside Cristian Romero in the centre of Postecoglou’s back four. “We still have trust in the gaffer’s way of playing,” he said. The absence of Son aside, Spurs have an almost full-strength squad: a “positive” development, Postecoglou said, which has restored a “feeling of everyone being in it together”.

For Tottenham, this is a chance to reach their first European semi-final since the run to the Champions League final in 2019, and only their second since 1984.

“I don’t see it as salvaging the season, I see it as an opportunity to do something special,” Postecoglou said.

As far as he’s concerned, what’s gone before is history. His task is to make sure that what happens from here on in is too.

Tottenham (probable, 4-3-3): G Vicario – P Porro, C Romero, M van de Ven, D Udogie – L Bergvall, R Bentancur, J Maddison – B Johnson, D Solanke, M Tel.

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Originally published on The Times and republished with permission

Originally published as Ange Postecoglou says he couldn’t care less but he’s doomed if Spurs lose.

Originally published as Ange Postecoglou won’t be defined by win or loss in Tottenham’s Europa League quarter-final