"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play…it is war minus the shooting."
Angeball
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the definitive biography of Ange Postecoglou, Vince Rugari, London, Headline, 2024. ISBN 978103541718 6
The book describes itself as a narrative retelling of Ange Postecoglou’s career in football “drawn from more than 50 interviews with those who have worked with, against, above and below him”. The author helpfully points out that for us football is the global game but for an Australian the big sports are Aussie rules, rugby league and cricket but certainly not football. Ange had to overcome then irrelevance of the sport in Australia to gain worldwide credibility.As his name betrays, Ange is Australian with Greek roots. He started his coaching career with South Melbourne, spent two years in Greece, returned to club coaching in Australia, was coach of the Australian national team for 5 years, qualifying them for the 2018 World Cup but then resigned before the World Cup started. After four years in Japan he was appointed manager of Celtic. He started badly and was ridiculed in the Scottish press and then proceeded to take Celtic to the league title in his first season. After two years, Tottenham Hotspur came calling.
The most interesting part of the book is when Ange is quoted, explaining his philosophy:
“the end goal is we just that we want to score more goals than everyone else… preventing them from being scored against you may mean that you never lose but if you don't score them, you'll never win... We want to be an aggressive, attacking, bold, brave football team… I can think of no better 5 words to define my career than ‘his teams were too attacking’”.
He is totally committed to his style of play. He wants his team to seek the win unafraid of losing. What he wants is for his players to take the game on, to pass their way out of trouble – he sees a world where there are no defenders, midfielders or attackers but 10 outfield players who are not restricted by their starting positions and can swap and rotate at will. When he goes to a new club, especially if he retains some of the coaches from the previous regime, it takes a lot of time to communicate to players and coaches how he wants the team to play.
The author suggests “the reason Postecoglou resonates so much with the fans is because ultimately he is a fan”.
I was very surprised when Eric Dier was surplus to requirements at Tottenham and not at all surprised that he has done so well at Bayern Munich. The book explains it quite simply: there was no place for him at Spurs “because of his lack of pace he couldn't play the Postecoglou style”.
The book gives a fascinating insight into a really interesting football manager.