Ange Postecoglou has had a dream run as Tottenham’s latest manager but before his first game at the helm, the 58-year-old revealed the one downside to his new gig. He’d had to drop out of the English Premier League fantasy soccer competition he’s been part of for 20 years. It’s no longer make-believe for the Australian coach.
“I don’t need to play now because I am a Premier League manager,” he said at a media conference last month. “There you go, it’s not a fantasy any more!”
Postecoglou is living the dream as the first Australian to take the reins of an EPL club. But his fantasy land could be in for a reality check this weekend as his Spurs will face Arsenal in the highly anticipated North London derby, pitting his attacking “Angeball” style against last season’s Premier League runner-ups.
Ange Postecoglou, Tottenham Hotspur manager, celebrates his team’s victory over Burnley earlier this month.Credit: Getty Images
But let’s go back a second.
How did the man born in Athens and raised in Melbourne, who rose through the ranks at South Melbourne first as a player, then as a coach, end up at the helm of Tottenham, the powerhouse club that sits just below the top tier of the Premier League, with the whole world watching?
Postecoglou played 193 games for South Melbourne as a one-club player in the National Soccer League (replaced by the A-League Men) from 1984 to 1993, and represented Australia four times from 1986-1988 before a knee injury prematurely ended his career at age 27. He was a good player but by no means a superstar.
But since he started coaching, almost everything he has touched has turned to gold (keeping in mind a rough patch with the Socceroos under-20s in 2006 and the Joeys under-17s the year before).
His first head coaching role was at South Melbourne in 1996, after a brief stint as an assistant coach at the same club, where he led the side to back-to-back titles in 1997-98, ending a seven-year drought.
Fast-forward to the late 2000s and Tottenham fans Googling their new manager will be taken back to an infamous live TV feud with former Socceroo Craig Foster after Postecoglou, who was in charge of the Australian under-20 team, failed to qualify for the under-20 World Cup. Foster grilled Postecoglou on whether he would resign during a chat on SBS’ The World Game. (Foster has since praised Postecoglou for his attacking style and the successes that led him to the Spurs job).
Postecoglou then made his way through the A-League, helming Brisbane Roar in 2009 - where he was praised for coaching some of the best soccer the domestic league had seen, and secured the first back-to-back titles in the competition in 2011-12 - before taking the reins at Melbourne Victory for 2012-13.
An appointment as Australian national team coach between 2013 and 2017, garnered international attention, at the 2014 World Cup and especially after the country’s Asian Cup win in extra time against South Korea in 2015. He resigned from the Socceroos in abrupt fashion after sealing qualification for the 2018 World Cup and last year admitted to feeling disillusioned at the time after the Asian Cup triumph failed to be the watershed moment for the game in Australia he had hoped.
During his tenure with the Socceroos, Postecoglou, a long-term supporter of AFL team Carlton, was also part of the panel that appointed Brendon Bolton as coach of the Blues in 2016.
Following this, he signed with the Yokohama F. Marinos in 2017; two years later, he guided the club to their first J. League title in 15 years.
Ange Postecoglou after winning the NSL with South Melbourne in 1999Credit: Vince Caligiuri
From there, he was named as the manager of Celtic in the Scottish Premiership League in 2021, becoming the first Australian to coach a major club in Europe, but the appointment came with public questions: “Who’s this Australian guy?”
Former Scottish football player Alan Brazil at the time slammed the appointment on air with viral comments he’s since walked back and apologised for (which seems to be a running theme for Postecoglou doubters): “Celtic have applied for exemption with UEFA for Yokohama Marinos boss - what is it, Postecooglou? (sic) - to manage in Europe. He does not hold the required licence – oh, this has got to be a wind-up ... Where do they come up with these guys from?”
Doubters were quietened quickly. The Australian led Celtic to a Scottish title and was named league manager of the month five times in his first season. They won it again the following year and secured back-to-back Scottish League Cup final wins.
Celtic fans were enamoured. Come December, they had a new chant: “Last Christmas I gave you my heart, but the very next day, you gave it away. This year, to save me from tears, I’ll give it to Postecoglou.”
Perennially under-achieving Tottenham were now interested and in June this year, he left the Scottish club and signed a four-year contract to become the first Australian - and Greek - to manage a Premier League side. The doubters came again, in spades, but the fans grew with the wins.
Only in charge for a few weeks, he won the Premier League manager of the month for August and many pundits have backed him to be in the running for the end-of-season manager award too.
Dedicated, hard-working, visionary: Ange Postecoglou with the Scottish Cup after Celtic’s win at Hampden Park, Glasgow, last weekend.Credit: Getty
Melbourne Victory defender Jason Geria said those who had been coached by Postecoglou weren’t surprised by his success at Celtic and his flying start at Tottenham.
“He’s a coach that is very passionate about the game, he believes in playing an attacking brand of football, staying on the front foot, being really positive and just the belief that he instils in players is something special. It really galvanises people,” said Geria, who was signed by Postecoglou at Victory in 2012.
“Everywhere he’s gone, he produced. He produced here, he’s produced in Japan, Scotland and now seeing the fruits of it at Tottenham.
“I think it’s a shock for them [in England] because it’s an Australian doing this for them but people who’ve played under him, and seen what he’s capable of, we’re not really too surprised about what’s going on now.”
That attacking style of play has been nicknamed “Angeball”, a style with a focus on relentless high-pressing and retention of the ball that controls the game and limits possession for opposition.
So far, it’s worked.
Postecoglou’s Spurs have had a dream start to the English Premier League season, remaining unbeaten with four wins and a draw.
Tottenham sit second on the ladder but all eyes will be on the team’s clash with Arsenal on Sunday night (11pm AEST).
Some experts, such as Sky Sports pundit Paul Merson, think the Australian manager’s reliance on attacking play might not stack up against Arsenal.
“Sunday is all about how Tottenham approach it and I don’t know if Ange Postecoglou will change his game. Speaking to Celtic fans, he won’t - he plays the same football everywhere he has gone,” Merson told Sky Sports.
Another sceptic in the pre-season was former Tottenham boss Glenn Hoddle, who doubted if Angeball would be sustainable in the Premier League.
“I don’t think you can play that way defensively, I really don’t. They controlled every game that they played up at Celtic, they had the ball, but this is going to be different,” Hoddle said on Optus Sport ahead of the season.
“He wants to play a high line, he wants to press, he wants high tempos – you don’t stop until half-time and then you don’t stop until the end of the game. That’s how he wants his players to work – hard.”
However, Geria says Postecoglou’s relentless approach to attacking is what has helped him be so successful.
“It’s a focus on his team and then taking control of the game and having a relentless attitude in terms of … just attack, it doesn’t matter whether it’s two goals, three goals [down] or 10-nil up, just keep attacking, keep scoring, keep playing good football and keep producing a quality product,” Geria said.
He said the style also galvanised fans because it was exciting to watch but admitted the Gunners match-up would be a big test for the Spurs.
“But you could say the same thing about the Manchester United game and they played really well against them,” said Geria. “[But] I think it’d be a good yardstick for everyone to measure them on.”
Without the outcome on the weekend, Spurs fan Stephen Anthony, who has followed Tottenham since 1982, said Postecoglou had injected a “tremendous sense of optimism and confidence” in the club and for fans.
“I’ve never felt this sense of togetherness at the club, it’s an incredible feeling and of course being Australian, and speaking with an Australian accent coming from Melbourne and having a Greek heritage, which is so strong, it’s just a really proud moment,” said Anthony, who lives in Fitzroy North.
“I mean the world stops when we play Arsenal, it’s just the most important game of the year for us, and we’re going to feel like we gave it everything and we attacked, we didn’t sit back … but I’m feeling that we can win and if we do, they’ll build a statue of him outside White Hart Lane.”
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