The People's Gaffer: The Ange Postecoglou Story

In a comforting way, Ange Postecoglou is just the boy next-door. 

Pep left home early; Wenger is too haughtily academic, even in his relaxed moments.

José’s been defeated by his grumpiness; Thomas Tuchel is fascinating but finally disqualified from boy-next-door status by a vague air of the nerd. 

Gareth Southgate is the boy-next-door that sort of wants to be one of the boys, so is confusing. Only Jurgen Klopp cuts the mustard here. 

Maybe it will be the boys-next-door that will be wrestling for the league in a couple of month’s time? 

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Transcript

From the salaries, to the bling, to the flash and the cars, there’s a persistent unreality about English football. It’s so ubiquitous that even the transfers and their choreographed ritual are lost in a long and lingering cloud of unreality. 

Take the Harry Kane transfer from Spurs to Bayern Munich in the English summer. First the opening gambits, the utterances by Kane that he wouldn’t be renewing, the refusals, the double-speak, the counter-offers. 

The unreality lasted long into the summer, deep into the “my-people-will-talk-to-your-people” phase of proceedings. In itself, the “my-people-will-talk-to-your-people”, was both an earnest endeavour and a tabloid charade. 

Later, the mandatory bark of petulance from Daniel Levy, the Spurs owner. “They showed us no respect,” he said at one point, as though he were some cut-price hoodlum with a flick-knife in a long-forgotten Martin Scorsese movie. 

But Levy’s bark had the required effect, didn’t it? Bayern’s offer was revised and the partners danced again to the pop of light-bulbs through July and into early August. Now Eric Dier is doing that same thing at a slightly lower level. Only red BMW’s and not chauffeured limousines wait at the Munich airport for him.

Was Bayern’s revised offer for Kane their third or fourth? Was it before Uli Hoeness, Bayern’s honorary president, got involved? I don’t quite remember but it’s not important. It’s not important because all we’re doing is illustrating a broad point. English football is many things. And one of those things is that it’s a stage for the twilight world of unreality.

As Kane went out for £126-million, so Ange Postecoglou came in for considerably less. Postecoglou, we’ve seen in the seven or eight months since, is not an ambassador for unreality. Anything but. Postecoglou is more an emissary for decency and a kind of contingent transparency, by which I mean that he obviously isn’t transparent in all things. 

Much has been written about Postecoglou this Premiership season. We’ve heard and read about his coaching commitment to attacking fluidity. We’ve had useful and intelligent videos on the narrowness of his midfield as Spurs play the ball out of the back. There’s been commentary on his endless use of the triangle, or analysis on the recruitment of players like Timo Werner from Leipzig. 

We’ve read about his cultivated detachment from the players, and the fact that he can be both distant and physically warm. We’re familiar with Postecoglou’s commitment to Tottenham’s high press. The fact that he’s strengthened the club’s discipline and identity are ideas have been rehearsed and dissected with by now tiresome regularity.

These things are all extremely important but they neglect a small yet telling something – I’m hoping to surprise you here – which is Postecoglou’s attitude to language. This is not only because he speaks in old-fashioned, almost universal terms, but because he speaks with relative candour. He seems to mean what he says. And he seems to be what he means. 

His language is original. He speaks in his voice and no-one else’s. In this he reminds me a great deal of Eddie Jones, the former England and Australia rugby coach who currently has his hands full making Jason rugby competitive again. Eddie isn’t evasive, and neither is Ange. This, in small part, is what it means to be an Australian. These guys are proudly egalitarian. Part of being the same as the guy next to you is sharing the assumption that you can communicate effectively with him, which means being reasonably transparent. What you see is what you get.

Like a five-man midfield, English football it is busy with phrases. In the media, on the seats, on fans’ smart-phones. There’s a life-cycle with these phrases, as they drop in and out of fashion and usage. 

Once we became familiar with phrases like “diamond-shaped midfield”, and “second balls”. Now we’ve become accustomed to “the overload” and the “high press”, and, “inverted fullbacks”. Every so often, and this really kills me, given the amounts these young men are paid, we even hear the words “on his weaker foot” but this is a crusty aside by an ageing misanthrope. The result of all these phrases is a rhetoric. 

The more the rhetoric is used, the greater the impression that we are in a shared universe of meaning, except that the opposite is equally true. The more frequently the rhetoric and clichés of the game are brought into play – as it were – the less they mean. Here language serves like a mist, rather than a clear stream. 

Postecoglou is not above verbiage and cant and cliché, but having watched many of his press conferences, I believe that the words he uses express a choice. Firstly, he chooses not to employ the current rhetoric of Premiership football. From the point of view of words, he wants to be his own man, not the cultures’. This quickly establishes his identity. 

His choice is that he is going to use words to tell the fans and the journalists and the world at large important things that he believes it is important for them to know.  And he’s going to do that in his own words, in his own voice, wherever possible.

Language is often a problem – broadly-speaking – in English football in another way. This is because many players and managers are disadvantaged because English is not their first language. They make sense of their world in Spanish or Korean or Japanese and translate those thoughts back into English. 

Sometimes these translations are lost in translation. And sometimes what we get is a pale shadow of meaning. Like the ghost of a late run to beat the off-side trap.

Postecoglou gives you full-bore meaning. Which is not to say that it isn’t leavened by irony, or winnowed with amusement or, even, very occasionally, anger. But Postecoglou trusts language. And that’s great. He also trusts that language – and his use of language – will reach us. 

Such commitment is rare. And it also reflects his value system, which is interesting, even old-fashioned. Listen carefully and he’s saying all kinds of interesting things about faith and suffering and joy, things we’ll unpack a little later in this podcast.  

Around the time that Postecoglou was awarded one of his three Premiership “Manager of the Month” awards after joining Spurs he was interviewed by Rio Ferdinand. At one point Ferdinand asked Postecoglou if he’d received media training. Ange replied that he hadn’t, which was a truthful and honest answer. 

Except that the answer obscures a far larger, far more important  truth, which is this: While Postecoglou might not have received any formal media training, he’s been on the practice pitch of life for decades, and, so, yes, in a manner of speaking, he’s received oodles of media training. Given the amount of time he’s spent on the training pitch of life, there’s little wonder that we like him. 

Media training or not, Postecoglou is a good communicator. And his words are expressive of values. There seems to be a harmony between word and value, which is why he gives such a strong impression of congruence or, if you like, authenticity.

Postecoglou sounds like who he is, or at least who we think him to be. In an unreal environment, this is re-assuring. It’s more than re-assuring, it’s refreshing. The English and world media enjoy a new football hero, on or off the pitch. Someone who doesn’t spend most of his time scowling is nice for a change. Or telling you with perverse pride and self-congratulation that he can’t tell you anything. All this is not to be dismissed. 

Of course, we’ll always get the haters. Poor old Roy Keane just can’t help himself. Going into Sunday’s away tie against Manchester United with key players like James Maddison still injured, Postecoglou’s team were the better one in a two-all draw. Roy sniffed like an old Manchester United stalwart. “Spurs were this, Spurs were that, everyone relax – it was two-all.”

Thank-you for your generosity. Roy.

What are some of these values? One of the values he talks about is faith, as in we have to have faith in our system. In one clip I watched, I forget which one it was now, to be honest, he was critical of Spurs under a previous manager playing to preserve an early lead. 

This was anathema to him. He said that he would never want one of his teams to adjust their style and philosophy to accommodate the scoreboard. Rather he preferred that faith and football philosophy would dictate outcome. He was telling us here, of course, that he is no shallow pragmatist. He was made of sterner stuff. And he was made for bigger things. 

Postecoglou also talks about suffering. He talks about suffering in its positive sense, that in order to prevail you have to pound the road through the valley of suffering. This might or might not be true. Yes, Luton provide suffering, as do Burnley away. Wolves and Nottingham Forest probably provide suffering, too, particularly if Rodrigo Betancur’s passes aren’t finding their way to Richarlison or Cristian Romero. If that happens, we all suffer, except perhaps for the opposition defenders, goal-keeper and fans.

But what about the uselessness of suffering? What about suffering that doesn’t end with revelation. What about the suffering that is condemned to suffer, to suffer from its own suffering in a terrible loop of suffering? 

I see the canny Ange doesn’t talk about that so much. Perhaps, though, with all that time on the training pitch, with all that time with Ferdinand and receiving his “Manager of the Month” awards, he hasn’t put in the requisite time with his old careworn copy of the Friedrich Nietzsche’s collected aphorisms. It was Nietzsche, lest we forget, who said: “To live is to suffer. To survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

But let’s not be mean. When did we last have a Premiership manager who talked about faith and suffering, and who talks, therefore, about religion at one remove? Perhaps this is Postecoglou’s Greek Orthodoxy coming to the fore? Whether this is the case or not, it is comforting to have a manager talk about suffering, even though he has said that as far as he’s concerned, he hopes it will lead to joy.

Ange is comforting to us in other respects. He is comforting because he talks about guy things. He mentioned the other day – it was in responding to a question about what he would do on his 58th birthday – that the big 60 is just around the corner. I thought for a passing second that I might just have detected a shiver of dread in the expression on his face. I suddenly felt just that little bit closer to him. 

Like us, Postecoglou does ordinary middle-class guy things. He reads a bit. He tries to improve his mind. He’s guiltily disparaging about this missus and then quickly backtracks in a way that you can actually see their later conversation in the privacy of their kitchen or dining room.. 

He listens to Louis Theroux podcasts and tries not to laugh when the press corps can’t identify the Australian male singer who Theroux has been interviewing. Robbie Williams, they say. Peter André, they ask? Ange just laughs at them in an indulgent and vaguely avuncular kind of way. 

No, you’re wrong, he says. Worse still, you’re small-minded. Peter André, really? Can’t you do better than that? Finally, enjoying the fact that he’s got one over the media for a change, he tells them: Theroux was interviewing Nick Cave.

In a comforting way, Ange is just the boy next-door. Pep left home early; Wenger is too haughtily academic, even in his relaxed moments; José’s been defeated by his grumpiness; Thomas Tuchel is fascinating but finally disqualified from boy-next-door status by a vague air of the nerd. Gareth Southgate is the boy-next-door that sort of wants to be one of the boys, so is confusing. Only Jurgen Klopp cuts the mustard here. Maybe it will be the boys-next-door that will be wrestling for the league in a couple of month’s time? 

This is the boy whose parents emigrated to Australia from Athens in the 1960s and whose father slaved away on Melbourne building sites as an unskilled labourer. Ange was the kid whose father was never at home because he was too busy getting coated in dust and plaster and concrete. Postecogolou is an everyman. He used to support Liverpool and read Shoot and Roy of the Rovers. He talks our language. He talks in our language. You want to buy him a beer.  

I’ve been spending a fair bit of time in this week’s podcast talking about how Postecoglou uses and navigates through language. I’ve argued that his approach is as important to the Ange package as his attacking philosophy and his choice of players to express that philosophy. But there’s another aspect of language. And that’s body language. The body speaks. And it’s incumbent upon us to listen to it and see what it says.        

First, however, a clarification of terms. A distinction needs to be made, I believe, between Postecoglou’s approach in pre-game one-on-ones and the more expansive Ange when he’s sitting behind a couple of large microphones in the Friday pre-match press conference.

In the former encounter with the media, the Spurs gaffer seems to have pretty regular difficulty engaging in eye contact. Here he says the words – indeed he says absolutely the things demanded of him – but can’t look at the interviewer. This means that, as viewers, we’re exposed more often than not to the un-spectacle-like spectacle of Ange looking at his feet. 

Perhaps I shouldn’t be too critical. It’s not as if Postecoglou always looks at his feet. He only looks at his feet some of the time. Then again, looking at your feet is an action that speaks louder than words, isn’t it? 

Postecoglou is looking down at his feet because he’s imploring them to hot-foot it out of whatever cubicle of hot, fetid, sponsor-drowned space he currently finds himself in. He wants his feet, in a slightly old-fashioned phrase I’m fond of and will use shortly, to do his talking for him. 

Postacoglou Mark 2 is an altogether more expansive fellow. Maybe I should be more careful with my language? Pre-match press conferences, amongst the rank flotsam and jetsam of the grubby press and social media corps, allow Postacoglou a little bit more breathing space, sure. 

But we shouldn’t, however, make the mistake of giving you the impression that he isn’t on guard. Often Postacoglou puts one – or even two – elbows on the podium or table in front of him and rests his chin on one of his hands. 

This might be an action to stabilise the entire head and to prevent himself from nodding off. Or, his hands might act as a kind of deflector shield like they do on Star Wars Starfighters. With his hands there to protect him, he can feel just a tad more solid in having to confront the quite mind-atrophying idiocy of the questions he knows he’s about to be pelted with. 

It’s a bit like what used to happen in the town square during medieval times. When a serf or peasant was caught stealing a chicken he was placed in the stocks, where he reflected on the stupidity of getting caught and suffered from dehydration, sleep-deprivation and sunstroke. 

Worst of all was that he suffered abuse from passers-by, who called him a Man United supporter and rubbed pats of horse manure in his eyes, sure in the knowledge that he could do absolutely nothing about it. That’s Postecoglou right there. He’s in the stocks with nowhere to go, being pelted by useless questions he knows he’ll have to confront again in a week’s time.

When Ange is resting his head in his upturned hand it doesn’t only mean he’s looking for support. It means that he’s in the resting position and is looking to be amused. Children cradle their chins – and heads – in their hands when they’re watching TV. 

This is a neat inversion. Ange is letting those hapless fellows in front of him know that by putting his head in the cradle he’s there for a little light relief. Let the banter begin. Let the banter about Pep or Celtic or life back in Aussie when shorts were short and he had too much hair, begin.

In all my YouTube press conference trawling, I’ve only seen Postecoglou lose his composure on one occasion and it was fleeting. Once, when facing question unparalleled in its stupidity, he started a spasm of blinking. 

Blinking can sometimes connote lack of understanding, true. In this case, though, it was the blinking of outrage. Luckily Ange was hunkering down in the mental fortress behind the hand. The hand gave him comfort and respite, doing its defensive job in front of his mouth, playing the Declan Rice role, if you like, although given that Rice is at Arsenal, perhaps Spurs fans won’t find favour with the comparison. Please forgive me. 

Whatever comfort Ange’s hands gave the eyes, they couldn’t tame them. The eyes were going off on a late run all by themselves. After a couple of seconds, with good grace and an impressive measure of self-control, Postecoglou wrestled back his equanimity and poise. Damage to his growing image was avoided.  

Around the time that Postecoglou was awarded one of his three Premiership “Manager of the Month” titles, he was interviewed by Rio Ferdinand. At one point Ferdinand asked Postecoglou if he’d received media training. Ange replied that he hadn’t, which was a truthful and honest answer. 

Except that the answer obscures a larger truth, which is this: While Postecoglou might not have received any formal media training, he’s been on the practice pitch of life for decades, and, so, yes, in a manner of speaking, he’s received oodles of media training. Given the amount of time he’s spent on the training pitch of life, there’s little wonder that we like him as much as we do, whether we’re Spurs fans or not.

One of the things the pitch of life has taught him is to be wary of big calls. Much of what Postecoglou says shies instinctively away from making definitive judgements. This is a plus. Our world revolves around the big call in a big way. If you insist – or even suggest – a bit of shading, you’re being a wuss. It’s ballsy not to make it, and to resist the temptation to do so.  

Over the coming weeks, as things resume after the winter break, the season is going to make a definitive call on Postecoglou, and he on it. He’ll have to be careful not to give the impression that he’s equivocating. Reserving judgement might seem like a first-half of the season luxury.

On Friday, Spurs play Manchester City in the fourth round of the FA Cup. After that they play Brentford (home), Everton (away), and Brighton (home) in the league. James Maddison, out since November with an ankle injury, is scheduled to come back for the City cup tie and others like Pape Sarr and Yves Bissouma will hopefully be back from the Africa Cup of Nations next month. February will be clarifying. The light of March will be sharper still.

Spurs currently lie in fifth place on the Premiership table, where five points separate the top five teams, Liverpool, Manchester City, Aston Villa, Arsenal and themselves. It is difficult to see the title race coming from any quarter outside of these five. Do Spurs have what it takes? They’re certainly playing with speed and panache. 

They have a gaffer who knows what he’s doing. He speaks in a language that is refreshing to many ears. Finally, it’s a language that insists that we pause in how we think and what we say. Some might see the insistence on a pause as irrelevant. I take the contrary view. In the persistent unreality of the Premiership, I see it as heroic.