Why Ange Postecoglou Could Be The Perfect Manager For Tottenham
Tottenham Hotspur's long search for a manager is over with the appointment of Ange Postecoglou. But after a tumultuous few months for the club, could both his style and his personality be the perfect fit for them?
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:03 - Hi there, everybody, Adam Cleary from 442 here,
00:05 and after just, what, 90 plus days of him, possibly,
00:08 or him, maybe, or will somebody please come
00:11 and manage my football club, it's Big Ang.
00:14 Tottenham have got Big Ang, and that's pretty good.
00:17 Now, if you are a subscriber to this channel,
00:19 if not, just the button's there,
00:20 you will never regret it a single day in your life.
00:22 Last week, we did a video on why Tottenham seemingly
00:24 were having some problems in appointing a new manager.
00:26 Now, think about that video, and admittedly,
00:28 you will just have to take my word for it,
00:30 is I did originally include a bit about Ang Poster Coggley
00:33 and how he might actually be a good solution
00:35 to this problem, but I thought, nah, do you know what?
00:37 I'll leave that for now, I'll do it as a follow-up
00:39 next week before they actually announce him,
00:41 and, well, now they've actually announced him.
00:44 And it was gonna be about how his managerial style
00:46 and his tactical philosophy might make him
00:48 the right person to fix all of Tottenham's problems, so.
00:53 (bell dings)
00:55 Right, so first of all, gonna tell you a little bit
00:57 about Poster Coggley the man, and then after that,
00:59 we'll look a little bit at his tactics and his philosophy,
01:02 'cause it kind of feels like both of these things
01:04 are equally important to this appointment.
01:06 All right, please join me in the time machine
01:08 as we take a journey all the way through space and history,
01:11 and we arrive here in the year 2000.
01:15 Say You'll Be Mine by Steps is currently number one
01:17 in the chart, you are definitely already bored
01:19 of the Furby you begged your parents for for Christmas,
01:22 and over in Rio de Janeiro, for reasons known only to them,
01:25 Manchester United are competing in that club
01:27 World Cup thing.
01:28 Final game of the tournament is against
01:30 the Australian representatives
01:31 and the Oceania Club champions, South Melbourne.
01:34 It's an otherwise unremarkable game,
01:36 Quentin Fortune scores twice,
01:37 and as was customary back then,
01:39 David Beckham was, for some reason,
01:40 photographed with his shirt off.
01:42 But in the opposition dugout in that game,
01:44 and by dugout, I mean literally just this row
01:47 of garden chairs, Alex Ferguson's opposite number
01:50 was a one, Angelos Poster Coggley.
01:52 I mean, at 34 years old at the time,
01:54 Poster Coggley was at the very beginning
01:56 of what was going to be one of the most fascinating careers
01:59 in football management.
02:00 He immediately ended South Melbourne's seven year wait
02:02 for a domestic championship with back-to-back titles
02:05 in 1998 and 1999, followed up by winning
02:08 the Oceania Club championship that same year.
02:10 Now, while still very much at the peak of his popularity
02:12 in this job, he then left it to take over managing
02:15 the Australian youth teams, but that didn't work out
02:17 because he personally saw his job there
02:20 as creating pathways for these young players
02:22 to get into the Australian national team,
02:23 basically developing them in a national setup
02:26 so they'd be better players in the long run.
02:27 But the governing body saw his job
02:29 as qualifying for all the youth tournaments.
02:32 And thus, when they didn't then qualify
02:33 for the under 20s World Cup,
02:35 this led to a massive televised argument
02:37 between himself and pundit Craig Foster,
02:39 where we responded to the criticisms of the team's failure
02:42 by basically listing all the systemic problems
02:44 the country was having with developing players.
02:46 - You're paid to qualify.
02:47 - Why do you keep saying you're pointing to the players?
02:48 You're obviously not listening to me, mate.
02:50 So if you're gonna keep on, and to be honest,
02:52 you answered the question.
02:54 - And what's the point of this interview?
02:56 - He felt this made his position
02:57 within Australian football untenable,
02:59 which of course it did,
03:00 but it also made him low-key quite popular
03:03 with just Australian football fans at large.
03:05 And thus, after a few years in the wilderness
03:07 of like the Greek lower leagues amongst other places,
03:09 he started doing some punditry work in Australia,
03:12 and this combined with his overall popularity
03:14 got him the Brisbane Raw job.
03:15 He came in, immediately got rid of half the squad,
03:18 including some of the most experienced and popular players.
03:20 Ooh, look, there's Craig Moore.
03:22 You might remember him.
03:23 And the critics hit the (beep) roof about it.
03:26 Poster Cogley responded by simply saying,
03:27 "Look, judge me in a year's time."
03:29 And in a year's time,
03:30 they were easily the most exciting team to watch
03:33 in all of Australia.
03:33 But in two years' time,
03:35 they were A-league champions,
03:36 lost one game all season,
03:38 and went on a 36-match unbeaten run.
03:41 And in three years' time,
03:42 they became the first team
03:43 to win back-to-back A-league championships.
03:45 Poster Cogley was already now the most successful manager
03:48 in Australian football history,
03:49 and everybody simply called them Raw-Celona,
03:52 which I think does sound a lot better
03:54 in an Australian accent.
03:55 But I promised myself I wasn't gonna do any in this video.
03:58 So you'll have to do that yourself.
03:59 After this, he was poached by Melbourne Victory,
04:01 where, you guessed it,
04:02 he got rid of half the first team,
04:03 including some of the most experienced and popular players,
04:06 including Harry Kuehl.
04:07 Ooh, maybe you remember him,
04:08 and told everybody to judge him in a year's time.
04:10 Now, he might not have ended up
04:11 winning anything at Melbourne.
04:12 That's because he was only there for one year
04:14 before he was poached by the Australian national team
04:16 to just fix the Australian national team.
04:19 Now, this is where it gets particularly interesting,
04:20 because after he'd had that massive ideological disagreement
04:23 about how the youth team should be run,
04:24 they turned to him
04:25 because the Australian Football Federation
04:27 felt that they were too reliant
04:29 on the golden generation of 2006.
04:31 Your Vadukas, your Kuehls, your Emmertons,
04:33 your Schwarzers, et cetera,
04:34 they wanted someone to come in
04:35 and not be afraid of getting rid of the old guard
04:38 and building a new, exciting, sustainable team
04:40 from the ground up,
04:41 which had lots of pathways from the youth set up
04:43 into the full team.
04:44 And that's exactly what he did.
04:46 They qualified for the 2014 World Cup,
04:48 and out of the players who actually played
04:49 in that tournament,
04:50 only Tim Cahill and Mark Bresciano
04:52 were over the age of 30.
04:53 Their opening game featured Matthew Ryan,
04:55 Jason Davidson, Matthew Leckie, Ben Holleran,
04:57 Tommy Orr, all players 23 years of age or younger.
05:01 Now, and what's really interesting here,
05:02 and you're gonna need to remember me saying this,
05:03 is that they lost every single game at that World Cup.
05:07 They went straight out of the group stages with zero points.
05:09 And yet, the general consensus
05:11 on Australia's performance in that tournament
05:12 from both Australian fans and everyone else
05:15 was that actually, they looked really, really good.
05:17 They got drawn with the Netherlands, Spain, and Chile,
05:19 and Australia didn't look out of their depth
05:21 in any single game.
05:22 They were pushing for an equaliser against Chile
05:24 right up until the 92nd minute,
05:26 and put two goals past the Netherlands side
05:28 that successfully kept clean sheets
05:29 against both Brazil and Argentina.
05:31 And yeah, okay, they did get beat three in a lot of Spain,
05:33 but by that point, they were already out,
05:34 and they used the opportunity to,
05:36 anybody, anybody, just blood another load of young players.
05:39 I'm just gonna stop with the history lesson there,
05:40 because he leaves Australia
05:41 after getting them into the next World Cup,
05:43 and he does go to Japan for a little while,
05:44 but I just wanna jump to this season
05:47 with Celtic.
05:48 And the reason I'm doing that
05:49 is because while he is absolutely dominated in Scotland,
05:51 and we will talk about some of the numbers in a bit,
05:53 because they're absolutely crazy,
05:55 it was his performance in the Champions League this season
05:57 where Celtic did not win a single game
05:59 and went out in the group stage
06:01 that I think is quite interesting.
06:02 And they were drawn in a group
06:03 with Real Madrid, RB Leipzig, and Shakhtar Donetsk.
06:05 And let's just put the Ukrainians to one side.
06:07 They got a home draw and a away draw against them,
06:09 but they lost all four of the games.
06:11 Now, Madrid won 3-0.
06:12 Yes, but that doesn't really tell the whole story.
06:14 Like, they only created two more chances
06:16 than Celtic over the entire game,
06:17 and it was the lowest possession they posted
06:19 in the entire group stage.
06:20 And even away at the Bernabeu,
06:21 like, they got beat 5-1, which looks terrible,
06:23 but they had eight shots on target against Madrid,
06:26 which is a joint high in the Champions League this season,
06:29 along with that game where Man City beat them 4-0.
06:32 Same with the Leipzig games as well.
06:33 Like, yes, they were two defeats,
06:34 but they were two performances that were really, really good.
06:37 Like, bottom line,
06:38 when he's got the resources to be competitive, he dominates.
06:41 But when he doesn't have the resources,
06:42 he is at least still competitive.
06:44 And if I was a Spurs fan,
06:46 I'd be pretty excited about that.
06:47 But the big question, of course,
06:48 is how will Tottenham play under him?
06:50 All right, so if you've seen Celtic this season,
06:52 you will know they play in this sort of 4-3-3 shape,
06:55 but there is something wrong with this image currently,
06:57 and that is that most of them
06:58 are in the wrong half of the pitch.
07:00 Ta-da!
07:01 Celtic, in reality, actually play more.
07:03 Like, it's not uncommon to see them
07:05 in most games this season with their back line,
07:08 not even just on the halfway line,
07:09 but fully into the opposition's defensive third.
07:12 And when I say they dominate teams in that league,
07:14 I mean they absolutely dominate teams in that league.
07:19 They've got 73% average possession across the entire season.
07:23 Like, nearly three quarters of the entire season,
07:26 when Celtic were involved, they just had the ball.
07:29 That's insane.
07:30 And I know a few of you will be like,
07:31 "Oh, it's just Scotland, who cares?"
07:32 But like, that is genuinely,
07:34 even by the standards of Celtic and Rangers
07:36 dominating that league,
07:37 that is levels and levels above that.
07:39 And Ange Postecoglou's tactics with Celtic
07:41 is to literally put a pillow over the face of the opposition
07:44 and hold it there until their legs stop kicking.
07:47 And they do that by a combination
07:48 of having so many players available in attacking areas,
07:50 but also really clever movement
07:52 that creates loads of space and stops it getting congested.
07:55 Like, the wingers or wide attackers in this Celtic team
07:57 stay as high as they possibly can in this system
08:00 to stop the opposition defence from being too compact.
08:02 The idea being that the space this then creates
08:05 allows either of the eight to get alongside
08:07 the centre forward to effectively function
08:09 as another centre forward.
08:10 This requires both the centre backs
08:11 to push up alongside the defensive midfielder
08:13 to create a little triangle in the middle
08:14 so you can recirculate possession.
08:16 You can keep it, you can move it around.
08:17 They basically do the job of midfielders.
08:20 But what's really interesting about the system
08:21 is how the full backs work,
08:23 both in an attacking sense and a defensive sense.
08:25 Because you, a quite normal, insane person,
08:28 are probably looking at this thinking,
08:29 "So your centre midfielders play as strikers
08:31 "and your centre backs play as midfielders.
08:33 "This is insane, surely.
08:35 "The second you lose the ball, you will concede a goal.
08:37 "How is Celtic not conceding five goals a game?"
08:41 Well, we all know what a counter press is, right?
08:43 Celtic don't have a counter press.
08:45 What they do is have full backs
08:46 that are constantly looking for a counter press.
08:49 They never, ever, ever go on the outside.
08:51 They play in this space here.
08:53 They are both effectively what's known as inverted full backs,
08:57 which means instead of looking to get down the line
08:58 and provide width,
08:59 they look to move into the middle of the pitch
09:00 and play there instead.
09:01 And while it looks like this in the attacking phase,
09:03 they are just as happy doing it in the build-up phase
09:05 or even when they're defending,
09:06 they will spend a lot of the time
09:08 in the middle of the pitch.
09:09 Now, this is really important
09:10 because it enables you to do two things.
09:12 First off, it's actually quite difficult to score
09:14 from crosses in Scotland
09:15 because most centre-backs in that league
09:16 are big strapping lads called Angus
09:19 with heads made of granite
09:20 who would get rid of their own mother
09:22 were she floated into the six-yard box.
09:23 So this provides Celtic with better options for crosses.
09:26 Think about it, you've got your attackers nice and wide.
09:28 If they want to put a ball into the box
09:30 for either of these lads to get on the end of,
09:32 it's quite far to travel.
09:33 It's got to go up into the air.
09:34 It's got to hang.
09:35 You know what I mean?
09:36 It gives a defender a much better run at the ball
09:37 from which to clear it.
09:38 So if instead you can get a full back
09:40 in one of these areas,
09:41 what's known as the half space,
09:43 they can put in much better crosses.
09:44 They haven't got to hang them in the air.
09:46 They haven't got to float them over.
09:47 They can sort of drill them along the ground
09:49 or they can go directly at head height.
09:50 They can do the kind of crosses
09:51 that defenders hate trying to defend.
09:54 But the most important job is not this.
09:55 The most important job is how they defend.
09:57 Because Celtic do lose the ball,
09:59 they put in other crosses.
10:00 They create chances which burn out.
10:01 Because they're so high up,
10:03 there's loads of space for teams to attack into.
10:06 The full back's main job is to stop that.
10:08 With the central players all this narrow,
10:10 it makes it very difficult to sort of play
10:11 through the middle.
10:12 But the wide attackers being that wide
10:13 means there's loads of space in the channels.
10:15 And it's here that the full backs have to be alert.
10:17 Now what you probably think is quite sensible to do
10:19 is for the full backs then to sort of drop back
10:21 and deny them that space in behind.
10:23 But instead their job is to be as aggressive as possible
10:26 when the balls go into these areas
10:27 to try and force a turnover themselves.
10:29 And this is how they've got
10:30 such high possession statistics this season.
10:32 Not because they just keep the ball for the sake of it
10:34 and knock it around in this semicircle,
10:36 but because they win it back so quickly
10:38 in these areas after they lose it.
10:40 Now again, do I think Spurs are gonna play exactly like this?
10:42 Absolutely not.
10:44 If Tottenham with their current team
10:45 tried to do this in the Premier League,
10:46 they would concede about, let's do the maths,
10:49 16 goals a game.
10:51 But the fundamental principle of keeping your width,
10:53 creating space, being intense, wanting to be on top,
10:56 wanting to play on the front foot
10:57 is something that Postacoglou has consistently done
11:00 no matter whether he's the best team in the league,
11:02 like Celtic in the SPL,
11:03 or the worst team in the league,
11:05 like Celtic in the Champions League group stage.
11:06 But yes, Tottenham Hotspur fans, the long wait is over,
11:08 so please let me know how excited you are
11:10 or otherwise in the comments below.
11:12 And of course, if you haven't already,
11:13 please do subscribe to 442 on YouTube.
11:15 It's the best football YouTube channel in the world.
11:17 And if you wanna call me a big dote
11:19 who doesn't know what he's talking about,
11:20 you can get me on Twitter @AdamCleary, C-L-E-R-Y,
11:23 and the entire 442 social spectrum is available at 442.
11:26 In the meantime though, thank you very much for watching.
11:28 Well done to me for not doing a single Australian accent
11:31 in this entire video.
11:32 Personal growth, and I'll see you soon.