They laughed when Ange Postecoglou put his reputation on the line.
In pre-season, the Tottenham Hotspur boss flagged his record of securing trophies in his second full season at every team he’s ever coached for long enough to qualify: South Melbourne, Brisbane Roar, the Socceroos, Yokohama F. Marinos and Celtic.
“Usually in my second season I win things,” he said, and so the narrative arc for the 2024-25 campaign was set, there and then.
Moments after Tottenham’s 1-0 derby defeat to Arsenal last September, which left them with one win from their first four Premier League games, that line was thrown back at him for the first time.
He sent it back with interest.
“I’ll correct myself,” he told Sky Sports after the match. “I don’t usually win things – I always win things in my second year. Nothing’s changed. I’ve said it now. I don’t say things unless I believe them.”
As Spurs’ fortunes in the Premier League have gone from bad to worse to catastrophic, that line has been the primary stick of choice with which Postecoglou has been relentlessly beaten by his critics, the English media, the international media, and even some of Spurs’ own supporters. It’s been constantly raised in his press conferences, usually with a smug undertone, as if to say, “Well, how’s your bloody second-season trophy looking now, mate?”
“People keep mocking me about it,” he replied three months ago. “We will see.”
Well, here we are.
Having won their semi-final tie 5-1 on aggregate over Bodo/Glimt, Spurs are into the Europa League final against Manchester United. So Postecoglou is 90 minutes away – maybe 120 – from having dropped one of the coldest quotes in modern football history.
The psychological burden of Tottenham’s 15-year trophy drought, which has weighed so heavily on this club, could be finally discarded.
Ange Postecoglou in Bodo.Credit: nnaseathompson
By a man who, if certain reports are to be believed, will be discarded by the club regardless.
Indeed, the question of his future remains – but it shouldn’t. It is a ludicrous notion that a decision about whether Postecoglou is the right man to lead Spurs into the future, or at least the third year of his four-year contract, should hinge on a single fixture. It’s even sillier if it’s already been made.
There’s certainly no glossing over how poor their Premier League season has been, and how inexplicably bad some of their performances have been in it. But there’s enough evidence, if you want to see it, in how they’ve performed in the Europa League, and how Postecoglou has set them up tactically, and how the players are responding to him, to suggest that there’s still something in this project that is worth pursuing.
The unity in the Tottenham camp – as captured by the club’s channels, who posted his stirring post-match address to the players on social media – speaks for itself. Any other manager in these circumstances, and with those results, would have lost not only the dressing room but their own head long ago.
Yves Bissouma leads the post-match celebrations.Credit: Getty Images
Not Postecoglou. There’s been some evidence of fraying, but fundamentally, he’s kept it together.
The biggest challenge for him at Spurs was never about wins and losses. It was about changing the mentality of this football club, about getting rid of the ‘Spursy’ tag. And he’s doing it, bit by bit, challenging not only the external conversation about Tottenham but also their own internal self-defeating perceptions.
Like the trips to Eintracht Frankfurt and AZ Alkmaar earlier in the tournament, many fans were petrified about the prospect of playing north of the Arctic Circle on a plastic pitch against a team in Bodo/Glimt with a giant-slaying record. In the end, there was nothing to be worried about. The players couldn’t have been more focused.
Postecoglou, too, has probably learned some things along the way. There’s no doubt that Spurs are playing more pragmatic football in the Europa League than those who follow his teams would expect to see. His sides hardly ever launch it long from goal kicks; Tottenham did almost exclusively that in Bodo. Circumstances dictated it, as he explained afterwards, but there have been plenty of other times in his career where circumstances also dictated it, and he didn’t go down this path.
Why now, and not then? One for him to answer. Either way, those who knocked him earlier in the season for having no “Plan B” and never changing his tactics are quiet now.
Pre-match, Postecoglou essentially laughed off the suggestion from Arsène Wenger – the ex-Arsenal manager, so not a disinterested party – that the Europa League winners didn’t deserve to qualify for the UEFA Champions League the following season because the then-likely finalists Spurs and Man United were doing so poorly in the Premier League. They sit 16th and 15th respectively on the table.
Post-match, Postecoglou again took aim at the notion that people were “fearing” the prospect of Spurs actually winning something for once, and thus were working ahead of time to diminish their achievement before it happens.
“I could have been sitting here at exactly the same time in fifth position, and I can guarantee that the commentary around me would be: ‘Well, that’s great Ange, but this club needs to win something.’ That’s exactly what everyone would be saying,” he said, calling the hypocrites out directly.
“So of course it’s massive. You have to frame it against what this club has been through over the last 15 or 20 years and what the supporters have been through.”
What they’ve all been through this year, painful as it’s been, might yet prove to be worth it.
