Attack-minded Ange Postecoglou ready and waiting to confound expectations at Tottenham

SYDNEY – Ange Postecoglou has spent his coaching life proving those who underestimate him wrong and the social media campaign against him becoming Tottenham Hotspur manager was unlikely to bother him too much.

The 57-year-old Greek-born Australian, who was confirmed as Spurs boss on Tuesday on a four-year contract, has enjoyed success almost throughout his coaching career which began in 1996.

Postecoglou is a passionate man with firm ideas of how the game should be played – on the attack.

This would appeal to Spurs fans, who have been starved of attacking football following three successive defensive-minded managers in Jose Mourinho, Nuno Espirito Santo and Antonio Conte.

“Ange brings a positive mentality and a fast, attacking style of play,” Spurs chairman Daniel Levy said in a statement.

“He has a strong track record of developing players and an understanding of the importance of the link from the academy – everything that is important to our club.

“We are excited to have Ange join us as we prepare for the season ahead.”

His reputation for rebuilding teams and getting them to play in an adventurous, attacking style was built in his first job in the Australian top flight at Brisbane Roar.

Brisbane won successive A-League titles in 2011 and 2012, and he had started a similar rejuvenation project at Melbourne Victory when the Australia national team job became vacant.

Eight months later, he led the Socceroos to a winless but not entirely unworthy campaign at the 2014 World Cup and the next year secured Australia’s first major title at the Asian Cup.

Postecoglou led the Socceroos to qualification for the 2018 World Cup but, frustrated that the Asian Cup triumph had not boosted Australian football, quit before the Finals and headed off to Japan.

There he expounded on a philosophy grounded in the “Total Football” concept developed by Rinus Michels at Ajax Amsterdam in the early 1970s and built on by Johan Cruyff at Barcelona.

“My vision is I want to play football everyone talks about and with that, hopefully, we will have success as well,” he said in 2020 when explaining how he built a championship-winning team at Yokohama F. Marinos.

“Total Football is when you have the ball and everyone is involved, and the extension of that for me is that when you don’t have the ball everyone is involved as well.

“Some teams press aggressively, but don’t have the ball much and play direct, and other teams have the ball but don’t press. We try to do both, which is not easy.”

That 2019 J-League success gave him enough credibility to land the Celtic job in 2021. His appointment was widely mocked but, 11 months later, Celtic won the League Cup and Scottish Premiership double.

Three more trophies followed in the recently concluded season at Parkhead, which included the Scottish Cup.

“When I came here... the opportunity for me was that the team had been dismantled so I could build a team in the image of the football I wanted to play,” he said.

Engaging and articulate, Postecoglou can be thin-skinned when he feels criticism is unwarranted.

“I’ve been called egocentric. Selfish. There’s been calls for me to get sacked. But you know what? I’m still here. I won’t change who I am and what I believe in,” he said previously.

He becomes the first Australian to manage a team in the EPL and will join Spurs on July 1. REUTERS