by In a strange way it all started with a preseason friendly. The kind of game that tends to fade from memory as soon as it’s over, sometimes even sooner. A sweltering July night on the outskirts of Tokyo. Yokohama F Marinos against Manchester City at Nissan Stadium for a completely made-up trophy called the EuroJapan Cup. But in retrospect, it is the moment when a friendly Australian coach called Ange Postecoglou begins his journey to the Premier League.
It’s 2019 and Postecoglou is halfway through its second season in Japan. The first, charitably expressed, was a mixture of things. There was a cup final but also one of the worst league results in the club’s history. There has been relentless attacking football and relentless defensive breakdowns. A first relegation from the J-League has been narrowly avoided. But Yokohama’s top brass likes the direction of travel. Now, against their parent club and the parent company of the City Football Group, we are about to find out why.
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For 90 exciting minutes, all the characteristics of a Postecoglou team are present and correct. Furious high blood pressure. The back four camped on the middle line of the field. A dribbling goalkeeper and playmaker. Movements built from behind. One-touch blitz attacks with runners approaching from all angles. City won 3-1, mainly on the counterattack, but if Yokohama had converted one of their many opportunities, the score could have been much closer.
Yokohama finished the game with 58% possession. To put that into perspective, in Pep Guardiola’s competitive reign at City, only four rival teams have had more: Arsenal last season, Brighton at the end of 2020-21, Wolves in a bizarre Boxing Day fixture in 2019 and Barcelona in Guardiola’s first season. . Four times in almost seven and a half years. This is a full-strength City side, an XI almost identical to the one that will start the Community Shield against Liverpool the following week, with a full training block and a full Asian tour under their belt.
“Very demanding,” Guardiola gasped. “An incredible dynamic.” Raheem Sterling went further, praising Yokohama as “probably one of the best teams I’ve seen play from the back.”
At the end of the match, Postecoglou hugged Guardiola and placed a meaty hand on his bald head as if trying to tap into the source of his power. City flew home and turned their attention to more pressing matters. But on the other side of the world a seed had been planted.
For Yokohama, their performance against one of the best teams in the world was a resounding vindication of Postecoglou’s methods. “They left knowing (and of course it was a friendly) but understanding that even the best can be tested if you believe in something,” he later testified. “We could play our football.” Having been mid-table in the spring, his team clinched the title with a late run of 31 points out of 33.
Back in Europe, City were paying more attention than most to Postecoglou’s success. They pointed out the similarities between Guardiola’s philosophy and the style of football that Postecoglou had implemented in his subsidiary club. In the summer of 2021, when Celtic were looking for a full-time replacement for Neil Lennon, they were happy to offer their opinion.
Celtic and CFG have long maintained close ties, having carried out numerous transfer deals over the last decade. Mark Lawwell, son of former Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell, was previously scouting and development manager at CFG. Guardiola knew Celtic’s majority shareholder Dermot Desmond well from the celebrity golf circuit and Daily entry He reported that when they met to discuss the open vacancy, Guardiola wholeheartedly recommended Postecoglou, who shortly after signed a 12-month renewable contract.
On Sunday, Guardiola and Postecoglou face each other on the bench for the first time since that night in Yokohama. Guardiola has lavished praise on Postecoglou since his arrival at Tottenham – “Another exceptional coach is coming,” he said upon his appointment – and on Friday he went even further, ensuring that with his aggressiveness and passion, Postecoglou is one of those coaches. that he “makes football a better place.”
Postecoglou, for his part, has tried to downplay the links between them. “Check my phone, man, it’s not there,” he said in July. But tactically the influence is quite clear, and for all the attention devoted to his down-home manner and natural charm, less is said about perhaps the key driving force behind Postecoglou: his ruthless personal ambition, the desire to keep progressing and keep challenging himself. in addition.
Postecoglou builds his teams with the fierceness of a family, but he is not afraid to break them abruptly. He has not spent more than three years at any club since the 1990s. He left the Australian national team just before the 2018 World Cup because he felt the national federation’s objectives did not coincide with his. Above all, he understands brand value better than most: having a clearly defined idea that is innately associated with you and that can be communicated to the outside world.
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It is both genuine and an act, in the sense that a large part of coaching itself is essentially an act, the process of selling a vision to players and followers. It is no coincidence that Postecoglou has become very visible in the media since his arrival in England, always granting interviews, always explaining, always proselytizing. There are no vacancies at City in the foreseeable future and Sunday’s game is in no sense an audition. But Postecoglou wouldn’t be the coach he is without a strong instinct to prove himself on the biggest stages.
Opportunism gets a bad press these days, but how else does a coach from suburban Melbourne land at one of the biggest clubs in the world if not through his ability to identify opportunities when they arise?
Tottenham comes into the game on a three-game losing streak and in the midst of a defensive injury crisis. The percentage of play would probably be to go down 10 yards, squeeze City for space and try to keep the game tight for as long as possible. But Postecoglou knows, as we all know, that percentages aren’t what brought him here in the first place.
