By Sam Wallace
Is getting sacked as manager of Tottenham Hotspur necessarily a bad thing for the career of a coach?
Being martyred by Spurs chairman Daniel Levy certainly has its benefits at a club where successive incumbents, and indeed players themselves, have argued that the point of Spurs is something other than winning.
What is that? That Levy gets to run the club his way, and all else takes its place accordingly. All Spurs managers come up against the intractable problems of a fanbase at odds with Levy and whoever might now control what was the Joe Lewis stake in Enic, the investment company that holds an 86.58 per cent stake in the club.
All of which renders supporter patience paper-thin. While they might be up against better-resourced clubs with wealthier owners, Spurs might reasonably have expected to have won more trophies than just three in more than four decades, and only one under Enic.
This has been a bad league season, even by Spurs’ standards. In such circumstances, the accumulation of years of unhappiness at the club who never win anything means the recrimination is that much more brutal.
Naturally, as Ange Postecoglou heads towards his Europa League final reckoning, there is a tendency to believe that the best outcome for him is to effect a great turnaround.
That the heavily trailed post-season parting of club and manager is rethought, with Spurs’ first trophy since 2008, their first in Europe since 1984. Perhaps a reprieve along the lines of Alex Ferguson’s 1990 FA Cup triumph, a similarly dramatic buzzer-beater that changes history. Although for Postecoglou, the alternative is quite seductive too.
Ange Postecoglou walks on the field after the match between Spurs and Crystal Palace.Credit: Getty Images
In that scenario, he wins the final against Manchester United a week on Wednesday. Then, after the great tumult of emotion in Bilbao, he is dispatched a week later in a communique posted on the club website. Possibly with some words of solace and regret from Levy or alternatively just the bare details of the decision, left like a fly tip in the absence of any real explanation.
What history tells us, clearly, is that being the former Spurs manager can be preferable to actually being the Spurs manager.
Postecoglou’s immediate predecessors, Antonio Conte and Nuno Espírito Santo, have discovered that to be the case with their purpose renewed at new clubs. Conte is on the cusp of winning Italy’s Serie A with Napoli, while Espírito Santo has sealed Nottingham Forest’s first appearance in European competition since the 1995-96 UEFA Cup.
Even Mauricio Pochettino, the only managerial alumnus who seems to entertain notions of returning, has won trophies and made a lot of money post-Spurs.
He might have succeeded at Chelsea given more time. Neither of those men, nor José Mourinho, sacked six days before a League Cup final, ever departed Spurs with a trophy – much less doing so having predicted it.
That is what Postecoglou did in September, doubling down on the notion that he “always” won a trophy in his second year at a club. This is the sort of raising of the stakes that many would counsel against.
Yet football fans love that boldness. Postecoglou, like Alf Ramsey in 1963, who famously predicted England would win the World Cup three years before they did exactly that on home soil, just went for it.
There is evidence that two years into his Spurs life, Postecoglou has refined his style to something more pragmatic in Europe as that has become the priority, and so his team have delivered.
Eintracht Frankfurt were beaten at home for the first time this season in Europe. The change feels more sustainable for Postecoglou, though he may never find out how it works in a third season at Spurs.
Spurs chairman Daniel Levy.Credit: Getty Images
Postecoglou has done this without a single word of reassurance or encouragement about his future from Levy, or anyone else in authority at Spurs.
The suggestion that he was being lined up for a departure has hardened into something more substantial, but Postecoglou has ploughed on.
There is even a school of thought that Postecoglou could walk away himself. He did so in 2017 over a disagreement with the Australian football federation following qualification for the 2018 World Cup with the national team.
Maybe Levy looks at the example of Erik ten Hag, kept on by United for his FA Cup triumph last season when really the club felt they should sack him, only to alight on that decision five months too late.
But that comparison is all the more difficult at Spurs, who have won five fewer trophies than United during the past dozen years.
A dozen years that everyone agrees are the worst in United’s modern history. United have at least won some trophies in the bad times and the good. Spurs have done so in neither – until, perhaps, now.
Hugo Lloris, the former Spurs captain, who lifted the 2018 World Cup in the same role with France, felt strongly enough about the club to say some things about Levy in his autobiography, published last year, that would have made that relationship awkward.
“Who does such a thing in a moment like this?” wondered Lloris when he remembered the watches presented to the team by Levy inscribed “2019 Champions League finalist”.
To Lloris the message was clear, there was no premium placed on winning the final against Liverpool. “So it was written” the goalkeeper reflected on the defeat that followed. Then he got the sense that some Spurs people and some players were not that bothered about losing.
“Does the club really want to win?” he asked himself.
This was not a disgruntled fan, a fringe player or even a sacked coach. This was a man who played almost 450 games for Spurs.
There are other considerations for Postecoglou when he contemplates losing his job, such as the effect on his family of another potential relocation. Even so, history should tell him that he is not necessarily playing this Europa League final to remain as the manager of Spurs. Being the former Spurs manager is a good role too, and being the former manager they dismissed after winning their first trophy in 17 years, even better.
London Telegraph
