During the build to Saturday’s Scottish Cup final, Celtic coach Ange Postecoglou was loath to discuss his future — or anything else that could distract him and his squad from the task at hand.
“Do you think the person who wins The Masters or Wimbledon thinks about all these other things? Or does he think about winning?” Postecoglou retorted, in typical fashion, when it floated that he could both focus on the final and think about his next career move
“I’m talking about elite sport here. Maybe you don’t understand or conceptualise that.”
Now though, with a 3-1 victory over Inverness in the bag — securing the Hoops their eighth treble and the fifth piece of silverware under Postecoglou — one wonders how long he will be able to close his ears to the increasingly cacophonous drumbeat surrounding his future.
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Sources have told ESPN that Premier League heavyweights Tottenham Hotspur have made Postecoglou their preferred candidate for their vacant managerial role after being snubbed by Feyenoord boss Arne Slot. Rumours from earlier in the year had him linked with the likes of Chelsea, Leeds United and Leicester City, while reports from France have pegged the 57-year-old as a potential replacement for the outgoing boss Igor Tudor at Marseille — but it’s the Spurs job that keeps coming up.
Celtic are expected to make an improved contract offer to the Melburnian manager, who is currently on a 12-month rolling deal and would be able to leave the club without the need for any compensation but, if momentum is a genuine thing in these matters, it looks increasingly like Postecoglou will be taking his talents south of the border.
The response from both media and Tottenham supporters alike, inevitably, has been mixed, with perspectives largely coloured by one’s loyalties, nationality, knowledge of Postecoglou’s football, or Wikipedia browsing skills.
Having seen him rapidly revitalise the club and return them to the Scottish summit, Celtic fans are seemingly going through the stages of grief as their coach moves towards the exit, caught in various levels of denial, anger, bargaining, depression or acceptance as rumours over Postecoglou’s future swirl. Ironically enough, they are doing all this while vast swathes of the Spurs fanbase repeat almost the same conversations their Celtic counterparts did when the initial news broke that Postecoglou had been tapped as Neil Lennon’s replacement in 2021, just with a Premier League twist.
Postecoglou has never worked in England, in one of the big five leagues in Europe, or won outside the Scottish duopoly are the common themes, as is the complaint that, at 57, the Australian doesn’t represent the kind of “young” coach that could potentially overcome a perceived lack of experience on the big stage. Given the rate that the Premier League tends to spit managers up and spit them out, maybe they’re valid concerns.
What Postecoglou has done, though, is consistently succeed at almost every single club that has employed him; with silverware flowing into cabinets and an imprint left on the hearts and minds of supporters that have watched on. His Spurs candidacy isn’t built upon some kind of flash in the pan at Parkhead, but on over three decades of methodical and continued success at an increasingly higher legacy of competition. It’s telling that those sceptical reactions from Tottenham fans are a mirror image of those that occurred when Celtic came knocking; it feels like at every stop Postecoglou makes, he arrives with doubters, only for them to have become part of his choir by the time he moves to the next challenge.
