What can Tottenham expect for their first season
under newly appointed manager Ange
Postecoglou?
Spurs fans are holding their breath and their judgment on whether Daniel
Levy and the Board have brought hope of top tier success
Tottenham fans have become all too used to conflict and disappointment in the last few
years, with Daniel Levy’s hiring and sacking of managers often at odds with the fan base.
The ENIC approach has seemed more scatter gun than sniper and most supporters would
claim the club has lacked a clear target. There are very few long-term leadership reigns in
modern football so it’s no surprise that Spurs haven’t had a manager stay at the helm from
matchday one through thirty-eight in four whole seasons. The future could be very different
though, given the managerial pattern Ange Postecoglou has stamped on all his former
squads.
It’s hard to sum up Ange Postecoglu’s record without using the words ‘fight’ and ‘tenacity’
so the fit with Tottenham title aspirations could be promising. Let’s face it, Spurs supporters
know all about the challenges of chasing silverware and trying to cling onto championship
hopes despite Saturday losses.
Right from his career kick-off in charge of South Melbourne, Greek-born Aussie Postecoglu
has shown his strengths in the face of criticism and defeat. He’s scrappy, passionate, and
opinionated: consistently delivering an attacking style of football in the short term.
Resignation is one of his character traits rather than something he’s likely to offer after a
run of bad luck. Some might call him stubborn, but he has enough self-belief to share with a
whole team and he wants to be judged in years and seasons rather than individual games.
So perhaps Tottenham Hotspur can expect the future to be measured on Aussie time…
As South Melbourne’s manager, Ange demonstrated that he wasn’t afraid to make big
decisions. He tore apart the existing squad and removed stalwarts who weren’t achieving.
Initially criticised for that cull and a stern, strict approach, Postecoglu famously demanded
to be judged in a year’s time. And he stuck to his guns long enough to deliver two
consecutive National Soccer League titles. It’s a compelling narrative for those of us who live
and breathe football. Film plots have been written on just such lines of determination. So in
an era when famous A-list actors can buy up teams, it would be great for Tottenham fans to
believe in just such a Hollywood end to next season.
As Australia’s Youth Coach, Ange Postecoglu repeated the pattern. YouTube views of his
defiant stance and vocal protests in an interview about his performances show the growing
level of interest in his larger-than-life character. Pitchside he has perseverance, and when
challenged Ange’s strong personality is impossible to ignore. He’s ready to battle through
more than pundit questions about failure, though. He’s equally ready to argue with employers,
as the stint with the Oz youth squad shows. While the bosses there saw his role as a driving force
for qualification in international tournaments, Ange’s vision was on a different way to set the
world alight. He wanted to focus on quality: the long game process
of developing players for the future of the national side’s 1st team.
Homage to his European heritage came in the form of a position in the Greek 3rd Division.
From there he moved onto Brisbane Roar. Postecoglu took the same pattern of
management to each appointment and across quite diverse posts he adopted the method of
taking on a club in a critical state in several senses. Football teams with ailing fortunes and
uncertain futures get the Ange glow-up slowly – he’s a manager who doesn’t balk at being
initially unwelcome.
Nor does he balk at booting out a dressing room’s deadwood and making big changes to a
squad. It’s all about learning then, as the real Ange adjustment process gets underway. He
gets to know the strengths of his players and he drives them on towards victory in a truly
unrelenting fashion. As a coach that’s what can ultimately destroy the competition, not
showboating or solo star player shopping. Postecoglu’s method is to never let his head go
down and to expect his teams to adopt that pattern too. Even in defeat – especially when
defeat might look likely – to always play like the better team and play to the whistle; fight to
the whistle.
Seasons under Ange Postecoglu have none of the ‘you’re only singing when you’re winning’
fickle glitz. Graduating to take charge of the Australian National team, he showed a
maturation in his management style too. This time around, he pressed Oz talent to quality
football and qualification on the world stage not once, but twice. For the 2014 World Cup
the table doesn’t tell the full tale. Despite being win-less, Ange’s Australian sides showed a
touch of magic and wonder as they pushed assertive football to the wire in each match. The
then reigning champions, Spain, had to work to win. Then the Oz side pushed for an
equaliser against Chile right up until the 92nd minute. And then even though they lost to the
Netherlands, they pushed that same style of exciting football to win on possession at least.
Under AP leadership, Australia won the Asian Cup (the southern hemisphere equivalent of
the Euros) for the first time ever. Ange then got his National squad to qualify for a second
World Cup competition in 2018 with a kind of resigned wizardry. He might not have been
singing from the same hymn sheet as his bosses, but he got the fanbase behind him and the
team. Second World Cup qualification and then quit was pretty impressive as mic drops go.
Successive attempts were repeated in the Japanese stage of Postecoglu’s career next.
Managing Yokohama F. Marinos saw a season of struggle which nonetheless ended on
second highest goals scored. He then drove them to follow up with a League win the next
year.
Joining a Celtic outfit in crisis, Ange stamped that same pattern across the Scottish
Premiership. Passionate Celtic fans saw his appointment as part of the problem rather than
its solution. And oh how they were proved wrong…
AP’s Celtic won the treble and never backed down. Even on an away day in the Santiago
Bernabeu, they took the game to the opposition on their own soil. The man’s grit and front
are inspirational for fans of his teams. Celtic demonstrated that admirably by never backing
off playing a full game on full possession in spite of the gutsy Bernabeu home fans chanting.
Coming bottom in a Champions League group still didn’t get the manager’s gaze down and
that’s the consistent tale across all the teams he’s been in charge of. He manages to get a
team playing their all. And that’s surely what we want and need at Tottenham.
Why the managers we might have expected Levy and the Board to hire are perceived as
better is a discussion in its own right. Postecoglu seems to thrive on crisis, challenge and
confrontation as the starting point. He certainly doesn’t expect a welcome, but he refuses to
leave until he’s achieved success. Most importantly for such a devoted fanbase, Ange
actually wants to be there at Tottenham. According to his agent, he’s actively sought the
appointment for some time. And time is a key factor, as the seasons of Ange Postecoglu are
expected to run their course.
So Postecoglu doesn’t think he’s a bigger name than any of the clubs he’s managing. But
what is he bringing to Spurs? Well, he absolutely believes that he can bring out the best of
any team that he gets to know. As expectations go, that sounds pretty good. Going by the
pattern of all his previous seasons in football management, Ange Postecoglu is not a short
fix, a quick fix, or a polite option. But he racks up a lot of attacking, exciting football on the
way to the kind of silverware wins that Tottenham fans surely want.
We just have to expect that it might take a season or two. And we have to give him time.
Written by William Duffield
09/06/2023
