NO STRANGER TO DERBY HEAT
‘The pain of defeat in other fixtures could be soothed by the fact the enemy had got on a plane or car and left town by the time the sun came up. A defeat in the derby followed you everywhere ...there was no escaping the hurt’
This is one of the biggest fixtures in global football. I look forward to the experience
‘THIS is not just another game.’
THE words chosen by Ange Postecoglou to open a self-penned newspaper article on his most profound derby experience. Recalling his first match in charge of Melbourne Victory in 2012, Postecoglou devoted a first-person piece to the Herald Sun title two years later.
By then operating as Australia’s national coach, the pain inflicted in that opening 2-1 defeat to rivals Melbourne Heart remained palpably raw.
‘The pain of defeat in other fixtures could be soothed by the fact the enemy had got on to a plane or car and left town by the time the sun came up,’ he continued. ‘A defeat in the derby followed you everywhere.
‘There was no escaping the hurt, whether in public, in the workplace or sometimes at home. And the victors were not shy in taking every opportunity to rub it in.’
Asked this week about his foray into the world of sports writing, Postecoglou laughed: ‘I think I was pretending to be a journalist!
‘I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in several games that hold
that kind of significance and you take something away from all of them.’
Although yet to experience the Glasgow equivalent, it sounds like Postecoglou is pretty well prepared. Yet he’s not naïve enough to expect that he has all the answers going into his maiden Old Firm fixture.
Today he’ll step out at Ibrox as Celtic manager for the first time. His experiences Down Under and in Japan will all feed into his game management — but no matter the outcome, he expects to have learned something new about his team and himself.
‘The experience, the build-up to it, it’s all part of it and you come out of the other side, usually, with the knowledge that you have added to the person you are,’ he reflected.
‘Because as human beings these experiences shape us. These past derby games all had different things attached to them.
‘Does it prepare you for this particular derby? Probably not. Each derby is unique and this one is definitely unique.
‘It’s one of the biggest fixtures in global football so I am looking forward to that experience and I am sure I will come out the other side enhanced as a person.’
One thing we can be sure of is that Postecoglou will change nothing of his own demeanour or style of play going into today’s first meeting of the season with Rangers.
For the first time in a decade, the Ibrox side enter the opening Old Firm game of the season as champions.
They also do so at a stadium that will house a completely partisan audience. In years past, a packed Broomloan Stand would be there to give the away team a push.
But even in advance of the Covid protocols that have reduced capacity for today’s game, the Rangers board had taken the decision to whittle Celtic’s allocation down to a few hundred.
‘We go in there knowing it is not going to be a friendly environment, acknowledges Postecoglou. ‘We know we are going to have the whole stadium up against us and we have to rise to that challenge and try to overcome whatever impediments that puts in front of us in terms of how we play our football.
‘That’s a fantastic incentive for us.
Because we know if we come through that to the other side it will give us strength moving forward.
‘While they won’t be in the stadium, there will definitely be millions who will be backing the boys on Sunday. They won’t be walking out there alone, that’s for sure. From the fixture’s point of view and its significance around the world, it would be great to have two sets of supporters there just for the picture that emanates, how important this derby is to the city.
‘As coaches we can say that it’s only one game, it’s only three points, you don’t get extra.
‘But it’s not lost on me that this means more than three points to our supporters.
‘I know what this will mean if we can get a victory. Particularly away from home. I know what it will mean to our supporters, but even for our players it is a big game and there is extra significance.
‘As much as managers want to take a calculated view and say that we won’t get carried away if we are successful and not get too down if we lose, it’s a fixture that means a lot to the people at this football club and you carry that responsibility into the game.’
The early-season performances from Celtic have been characterised by a high-energy approach that sees the team press high and run hard from the first whistle.
The ploy has yielded spectacular 6-0 wins over both Livingston and
Dundee, but it also carries risk with Hearts, Midtjylland and, last week, AZ Alkmaar managing to take advantage of an exposed defence at the other end.
Still just weeks into the job after the Parkhead board spent months waiting for Eddie Howe to give an answer on their offer that he succeed Neil Lennon, Postecoglou has yet to complete his rebuild of the club’s defence.
New signing Josip Juranovic is in contention to start today and the Croatian international should offer an upgrade on the much-improved Anthony Ralston in the right-back position.
Goalkeeper Joe Hart and central defender Carl Starfelt have also been added but each wobbled as the team scraped through on aggregate in the Netherlands.
Celtic’s last Ibrox win came two years ago when Neil Lennon’s side boxed clever to clinically defeat Steven Gerrard’s side on the counter-attack, but there is little prospect of Postecoglou adopting a similar ploy today. His is a team
built to attack and with Kyogo Furuhashi, Liel Abada and Ryan Christie all starting the season impressively, the home team can expect an onslaught.
‘I set up my teams to play that way because you know that in the big games there is inevitably an extra energy,’ said Postecoglou.
‘Whether that is generated by the significance of the fixture or the crowd, the pace tends to be pretty frenetic at the start.
‘If you get used to that on a daily basis then you are more likely to be able to perform in these matches. It’s not a major adjustment.
‘We talked about that on Thursday night, that in the first 20 minutes AZ were going to come at us and we needed to start well.
‘And we did. We started brilliantly. We played our football, scored our goal and created chances. Unfortunately we made a couple of mistakes and we saw how quickly momentum shifts in that scenario.
‘We expect the pace, tempo and intensity to be high at Ibrox on Sunday but that’s the football we want to play.
‘We want to be successful of course but just going there, playing our football in that kind of environment is going to make us stronger.’