Ange Postecoglou thought he conquered the language barrier in Japan, where almost every conversation he was involved in necessitated the presence of a third party, a translator, to make sense of it.
In Scotland, he confronted a similar challenge, although there it was more of an accent barrier: deciphering the various grunts, noises and intonations made via the impossibly thick Glaswegian brogue into words, sentences, and then ultimately, some form of intelligible message. Somehow he managed.
Ange Postecoglou’s first season at Tottenham Hotspur is ending in drama.Credit: AP
Who would have thought it was in England where he’d be most misunderstood?
In fairness, Postecoglou has himself partially contributed to a situation where there has been ample room for misinterpretation – wilful and otherwise.
For months, he has fobbed off questions about where Tottenham Hotspur have been positioned in the “title race” or the “race for fourth”, dismissing them as rhetorical media games (which they are). His answer, routinely, has been that he wants to win every single game he’s involved with and finish as high on the Premier League table as possible – not that he doesn’t care about where that happens to be, but that he doesn’t care for letting anything other than mathematics dictate his ambitions.
If Spurs were to qualify for the UEFA Champions League, he said, it would have confirmed nothing material about the club’s embrace of his methods. It would not be an end in itself. He has tried to get people to look beyond the outcome as a measure of their overall progression, which some have taken as a bit of clever, self-serving semantics to save his own hide.
“It’s probably the worst experience I’ve had as a football manager.”
Ange Postecoglou on Tottenham’s loss to Manchester City
Where Postecoglou perhaps committed a rare error is that he didn’t think he’d be taken so literally.
When Spurs faced Manchester City on Wednesday morning (AEST), their fans really didn’t care about fourth spot, even though it was still mathematically within reach. All they cared about was losing, because to have taken even a point away from City would have been to give Arsenal, their most hated rivals, the opportunity to win the Premier League. And when Postecoglou challenged them afterwards on this attitude, in pointing out the “fragile” foundations inside and outside the club, they told him that he was the one who told them that fourth spot didn’t matter.
Postecoglou is often criticised as a “naive” manager in a tactical sense. Here, maybe he was culturally naive, which is perhaps more surprising. This was a once-in-a-generation storm of events that left Spurs fans in a difficult position: of course their preference would be to beat City and keep their hopes of Champions League qualification alive, but not if it meant Arsenal would be able to gloat about helping them win the title. They would have rather cut off their nose to spite their face.
He understood that school of thought, of course, but he didn’t think it would actually manifest in the form of supporters cheering against their team, and some hounding him directly in the dugout.
Son Heung-Min’s golden chance for Tottenham against City.Credit: Getty
A football club is more than just the people on its payroll. It is an entire ecosystem, which includes fans and media, and therefore the atmosphere they generate during the week and on match days will inevitably seep into the team environment. Usually, it happens in a positive way, and Spurs have benefited from the many times this season when their supporters have given them on-field momentum late in matches and willed them to an equaliser or a winner at the death. Postecoglou seemed to be suggesting the eerie vibe at the stadium might have had the opposite effect, and that as such, not everyone was “aligned” in the way he believes is required for success.
“It’s probably the worst experience I’ve had as a football manager,” he said.
“I didn’t think it was normal. I didn’t like it. I also didn’t say that I expected fans to behave differently. That’s their right. I’ve always said that, and I still stand by that. I also stand by the fact that I have an opinion on it. You support your team to win all the time. But that’s my view. Plainly, I’m in the minority when it comes to that. So that’s a lesson for me, I guess.”
He explained that he felt “real anxiety” that his trademark attacking approach might be interpreted, on that night at least, as intentionally kamikaze – that by playing their usual football, his integrity might have been called into questionif they lost heavily, which was always possible against a team of City’s calibre.
After trying to take the sting out of the situation by offering to give the press his “ugly mug” on a stick, and admitting he misread the landscape, one of the journalists present baulked.
“I can’t help feeling you’re incredibly hard on yourself,” the journalist said, suggesting Postecoglou’s experience of the Old Firm rivalry in Glasgow meant he must understand the often childish nature of football rivalries. “You get it, don’t you?”
Indeed, he does – he just doesn’t agree, and what he went on to say was proof that to treat this as a full-blown mea culpa from Postecoglou would be to take the incorrect reading.
“When I started at Celtic, it was the same sort of discussion,” he said.
”Everything was framed around … what Rangers were doing. I’ve said a number of times: you run your own race, and when you get to the finish line, have a look around and see where you finished. I thought it was really important up there because I felt like there was too much of an obsession with what was happening at Rangers at the time, because they were ahead. We were never going to catch them if that’s what we were always obsessed about, because you can’t control that.
“You want to stop another club winning a trophy? Win it yourself. That’s the answer. Doesn’t mean you don’t want them to lose – I get that, absolutely. But the notion of not wanting to win for any reason, I can’t understand it.
“But I didn’t hear anyone say that last week. All I heard was that it’s OK to feel that way, it’s understandable. So part of me thinks I am kind of on the outer on this subject, and I did get it wrong. But I won’t change. I’m fully respectful of that view. But I’m firmly on the other side.”
There was one other area where Postecoglou feels he’s been lost in translation. Spurs played with a different shape against City for the first time during his tenure – a 4-4-2 with no out-and-out strikers but two wingers. It was not unlike the system he used at Melbourne Victory and is perhaps a pointer to how they will play next season and beyond.
His critics seized upon the change as proof that Postecoglou does have a “Plan B” after all, but the only change was how they set up, rather than the way they played.
“It’s probably one of the biggest misconceptions about me, that I’ve got just one plan. I’ve used every system in the world in my career, mate,” he said. “It’s a lot easier than people think to tweak those things, as long as your principles stay the same. And that’s where I am.”
Spurs play their last game of the season on Monday (1am AEST) against already relegated Sheffield United.
