Ange Postecoglou, Tottenham Hotspur’s new coach: Inheriting football love from his immigrant father to becoming a father figure to Spurs | Football News

In less than three months, Ange Postecoglou, has transformed a perennially chaotic club to one of the bright lights of this premier league season so far. Post the Mauricio Pochettino era, where hopes flickered that Tottenham Hotspur would put decades of confusion and chaos behind, the club has swung between being aimless and directionless, with an occasional hope affirming performance only to be thrust back into the gallows of pain and futility.Curiously, in the season they lost their talisman and one of their greatest, Harry Kane, they have orchestrated the most attacking and attractive brand of football they had this century. Most staggering has been that the transformation has been smooth and seamless. It’s like he just came and sprinkled the proverbial magic dust. It’s not quite like that. A lot of work has gone behind the scenes, a lot of one-to-one discussion with the players to convince them of his methods, a lot of training and bonding sessions to groove them, and as defender Chrian Romero put it, “a lot of love and trust” being built.
The most illuminating trait, one that won the dressing room support, is that he owns up to the makes he had made. To scapegoat a player was almost a Spurs culture, but after the drawn game against Brentford, he put the blame of shared points on himself. It has been a trait of his throughout his footballing and managerial career, which has taken him to Greece, Japan and Scotland, besides different clubs in Australia and his country’s national team itself.
He would once explain his unshakeable philosophy in dealing with players “It’s about them knowing that there’s nothing that’s going to happen out there that’s going to be terminal in terms of their careers … ‘Don’t stress about the makes, I’ll back you,’” he once said.
His press conferences drip with wit and humour. He was probed about xG (expected goals) . He replied: “I can’t differentiate between xG and XL, which is the size of clothes I wear.” He was once mentioned as fatherly, and he replied with typical self-deprecating humour: “It’s because of the clothes I wear, and my beard is grey. But I like that, being called a father figure. It means a lot.

His own father was the most influential figure of his life. His father and the family had to flee from his hometown in Nea Filadelfeia, an Athens suburb, because his father lost his business due to the 1967 Greek military coup. With thousands, they took a treacherous 30-day boat trip to the other end of the world. He was just five years old then, and only later he realised the enormity of the sacrifice. “People say you go to another country for a better life,” Postecoglou. My parents didn’t have a better life – they went to Australia to provide opportunities for me to have a better life,” he told BBC Scotland.
Postecoglou’s press conferences drip with wit and humour. (Reuters)
“They sacrificed their whole life for me to be here. I don’t feel like I’m working every day, I feel like I’m living a dream that was founded other people’s sacrifice,” he added.
He hardly saw his father, Jim. He worked on all days but Sunday, leaving home in the morning, doing all sorts of jobs to lift the family, and reaching home at midnight. But on Sundays, he would play football with Ange. Initially, he disliked football and embraced footie and cricket (he still watches a lot of cricket and is admittedly a big fan of Bazball), so that he could blend in with the locals. “Then I realised that I made a quick connection that football’s something that makes him happy. So, if I love this like he does, it will get me close to him,” he told ABC.
His childhood was spent sitting next to his father at three o’clock in the morning, watching football from the other side of the world. “He would always point out the entertainers and the teams that were scoring goals. That got into my subconscious. When I became a manager, that’s the kind of team I wanted to produce.”
A simple philosophy was drilled into head—play entertaining football. And later make his team play entertaining football. In his playing career, as a left-back for Southern Melbourne, a club formed Greek immigrants, he was a rampaging left back, blazing down the wings, overlapping and dribbling with power and grace. He earned four caps for his country too, but the bigger dream was coaching, like his father’s idol Ferenc Puskas.
Ange Postecoglou with a trophy as Celtic manager. (Reuters)
Later, Puskas would come to manage South Melbourne, where he forged a lifelong bond with him. He drove him to and from the training, turned up to watch practice even when he was injured.Most Read
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The influence of Puskas still echoes in his game. Puskas was devoted to 4-3-3, wanted his wingers high and wide and he told the full-backs to attack relentlessly. It is how the Spurs gaffer too prefers to play.
Postecoglou too prefers a 4-3-3, but has morphed his side to a 4-2-3-1 to maximise the potential of the players at his disposal. He has thrust Son Heung-min into the centre forward role.He has seamlessly blended into the duties, scoring clinically like a poacher would, but at the same time not compromising on his creative instincts. The heart of the team is the triad of James Maddison, pulling strings as the triangle’s tip, circulating the ball with Yves Bissouma (deep-lying playmaker and defensive destroyer) and Pape Sarr (the box-to-box midfielder), a young and energetic pair. On the wings he has the quick heels of Manor Solomon and Dejan Kulusevski. The midfielders ensure that the wingers are always in space. The full-backs often invert and join the midfield.
It’s the usual modern game, only that he has instilled a lot of dynamism into the tactics. And already, he has lifted the gloom, that seemed like an immovable emotion, among Spurs fans. Postecoglou himself has said: “They go through enough pain, they deserve some happiness.” And there is a realic feeling that their best is yet to be.