Ange to proudly do it all his way
“WHAT’S the pressure?” asks Ange Postecoglou as he sits in a Sydney hotel preparing for another World Cup qualifier.
You might think there’s pressure in knowing his team could be six points adrift of direct qualifying by the end of tonight’s game with the UAE, with just three games left.
Or pressure in knowing that after three straight World Cups, a demanding public now expects a fourth as does Football Federation Australia.
Or pressure in the run of draws that have got us to this point, and the first time in 3 ½ years that his tactics have been questioned.
But that’s the point. Whatever you or anyone else thinks of his management, style or tactics, Postecoglou will do things his way.
A decade after he was hounded out of the job of coaching Australia’s youth teams, the fire lit within him by that episode hasn’t gone out.
“I’ve done that dance ( with the media), as a youth team coach I got smashed,” he said.
“But that was the only time in my career I compromised my beliefs. We’re doing that dance ( again), I’ll cop it a bit but we’ll see it through.”
His point is he was picked to be a certain kind of coach, the opposite of Pim Verbeek and Holger Osieck. They both qualified for the World Cup, but one got smashed in the opening game and the other didn’t survive in the job to even coach at the tournament.
“What everyone was saying … and why I wanted the job was that’s not how Australian teams should play,” he said.
“For 20 years in coaching what I’ve been consistent in producing is teams that win things. I do it in a certain way, it does get scary I understand that.”
Does that record mean Postecoglou should be above critiquing? Hardly, especially not if you listen to a leading figure speaking 14 months ago.
“( Coaches in Australia) have to be put under the scrutiny that you see managers here ( in England) getting. We don’t have that. If you’re a manager and you lose a game, you have to answer some tough questions.”
That was Postecoglou, in case you hadn’t guessed. He hasn’t lost a game, of course, just drawn the last four. But he doesn’t do caution, not even on a cow- paddock pitch in driving rain away in Tehran.
It’s instructive that when Postecoglou took some journalists through the presentation he made to his players last week, detailing the tactical system he was preparing to introduce, there were several game scenarios involved – and only one related to defending. v au/ tickets Tickets: socceroos. com.
“We do a lot of work on the defensive side, it’s just we prefer to do it with the ball,” he said in Sydney yesterday.
So there’ll be no rowing back from the new formation, no playing percentages. If it works, Postecoglou believes he won’t just qualify, but have a team that can really compete.
If it fails? Well, Postecoglou knows the process well in that situation.
“I’ve been in this game too long, and we’ve done this dance too often, it always ends the same way,” he said.
“People will make assumptions, but I took this job for one reason. I wanted to create an identity for ourselves as a football nation. Where that ends up, where that takes me, what people say, I’ll accept.
“I’m glad people care and are talking about it. I’m glad people are nervous and anxious and I’m glad they’re passionate about it.
“But if somehow people think that’s going to cause a reaction in me, that’s not what drives me.”