By Vince Rugari
In 2005, back when he was still playing the character of a buffoonish right-wing television pundit, comedian Stephen Colbert coined the term ‘truthiness’. It refers to something that feels true, based on a person’s beliefs or perceptions, but isn’t actually supported by facts or evidence; not that that’s ever stopped anyone before or since.
There is a fair bit of truthiness to the criticisms of Ange Postecoglou’s football. Always has been. Nothing’s really changed, aside from the personnel and the setting: instead of Robbie Slater and Mark Bosnich on Fox Sports in Australia a decade ago, pleading with the then-Socceroos coach to be a little more defensively minded sometimes, we now have Jamie Carragher and Jamie Redknapp on Sky Sports in the United Kingdom, saying essentially the same thing.
After Tottenham Hotspur’s rollercoaster 4-3 win over Manchester United on Friday morning (AEDT), which saw them advance to the semi-finals of the Carabao Cup, they were at it again.
Carragher condescendingly talked up Postecoglou’s commitment to attacking football as admirable – but then suggested that, because maybe the commentators have a better vantage point of the pitch than he would from the dugout, that they might have a better understanding of Spurs’ on-field issues.
And since they’ve noticed that he hardly ever gives out instructions from the sideline during a match, Carragher said that sometimes, Postecoglou’s players should actively disobey him, ignore his tactics and “get hold of that game” instead, presumably by sitting back and defending their lead and draining the clock without incident.
Game management, they call it.
Ange Postecoglou’s Spurs are into the Carabao Cup semi-finals.Credit: Getty Images
Spurs were 1-0 up at half-time, scored twice in the first nine minutes of the second half to lead 3-0, then hit the self-destruct button in the last half-hour. Hence the disquiet. Fraser Forster was the reason. Forster is Tottenham’s back-up goalkeeper, deputising for Guglielmo Vicario, who is one of 10 first-team players currently sidelined in what Postecoglou has described as the worst injury crisis he’s ever encountered in his 20-plus years in management.
Forster, 36, is not great with his feet. He was clearly at fault for United’s first goal, as Spurs went short from a goal-kick, and his poorly hit pass to Radu Dragusin was picked off by Bruno Fernandes and then punished by Joshua Zirkzee.
That mistake, as Postecoglou noted post-match, clearly affected him, and probably contributed to him being also at fault for the second goal seven minutes later, as the sense of dread began to grow around N17.
Archie Gray, the 18-year-old midfielder filling in at centre-back in the absence of three other senior options in that position, played the ball back to Forster as Tottenham retreated from the middle of the park. Forster was clearly shaping to clear the danger with a long ball – something Postecoglou usually doesn’t like his goalkeepers doing – but he dallied for too long, and by the time he finally booted the ball, Amad Diallo was right in front of him, and it deflected in off him. (Gray was later captured by cameras talking to Forster after the final whistle and saying he was at fault.)
Joshua Zirkzee celebrates after scoring Manchester United’s first goal.Credit: Getty Images
Never mind that these two goals were clearly both individual mistakes, and not a consequence of Postecoglou’s daring ‘Angeball’ philosophy, which had them 3-0 up in the first place.
Redknapp went on to say the goals conceded were squarely on the manager: they were “his fault, because he causes it himself” by wanting his players to pass to a goalkeeper not renowned for his ball skills. The reflex is always to blame Postecoglou’s wild, zany methods for anything bad, and not the more obvious reason: that Forster, as human beings tend to do sometimes, just had an absolute shocker.
“You’re sort of suggesting that I asked the players to, in those moments, make those mistakes, and I don’t,” he said to Sky Sports.
“We had solutions out there. That’s part of football. Individuals will, at times, make those mistakes. But from the context of how we want to play as a team, no, there’s nothing we need to change. I’ll be very happy if we keep scoring four goals and five goals a game – if we’re winning. Obviously, we want to win. For me, that’s still the most important thing.
Son Heung-min celebrates his late ‘Olimpico’ goal.Credit: Getty Images
“And I get it. It doesn’t get me any credit in the bank as an ‘astute tactician’. But so be it.”
Postecoglou is still being asked, week after week, if he’ll ever abandon his principles. They should know the answer by now. He has long since passed the stage of being grumpy about it. He now openly toys with reporters, leaning into the false caricature of him being all about style over substance, and not caring about defending or winning, trolling them to their faces.
“Are you not entertained?” he said, almost mockingly.
“What do you want? Do you want a scrambling 1-0? I know the studio is probably going in a meltdown over my lack of tactics, but you know what? I love the fact that we go out there and just take it to oppositions.”
It is instructive that only coaches who have a clearly defined and recognisable style seem to have that style blamed for every single shortcoming, even if the logic doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny. Postecoglou’s football is, indeed, serving a secondary purpose: it is exposing just how much of modern football discourse is based on tired old tropes, flimsy premises and Colbert-style truthiness.
It feels right to say United’s second-half surge was because Postecoglou is stubborn and didn’t tell his players to “get hold of that game”, even though it only happened because of freak individual errors that had nothing to do with anything else.
It feels right to criticise Spurs for being “too open” and “chaotic”, even if their stats show they are one of the Premier League’s best defensive teams, and that they’ve not lost a single game this season by more than a one-goal margin.
It feels right to think they’ll get “found out” by “top sides”, even though they’ve beaten “top sides” this season; it’s the other ones they’ve had trouble with.
It feels right to point at Postecoglou’s high defensive line as some sort of incredible anomaly, and overly demanding on players, even if most elite teams in modern football play with a not dissimilar set-up.
It feels right to predict that Postecoglou’s ideas will prove unsustainable at this level, but only if you ignore his long history of repeatedly defying exactly those kinds of predictions. He is now just two steps away from winning that piece of silverware he always does in his second seasons; Spurs have drawn Liverpool in the Carabao Cup semi-finals, which are played over two legs. The table-topping Reds are also their next opponents in the Premier League on Monday morning (AEDT).
Postecoglou is not, and should not be, immune from criticism. He makes mistakes. His way of playing football is not to everyone’s taste. There are fair reasons to have a crack at him. Some of their recent results have been unacceptable, and no manager is immune from the sack if they keep losing.
But most fans seem to be in his corner, and believe that Tottenham’s poor run of late is down to personnel, and bigger-picture issues around chairman Daniel Levy’s recruitment policies, which has left Postecoglou with a threadbare squad – not his tactics, which they think are worth persisting with.
Postecoglou’s journey at Tottenham was always going to end one of two ways: either he’d crash, or crash through. Both endings are still in play.