Pat Jennings was walking around the Tottenham Hotspur training ground, saying hellos, shaking hands, telling stories. Jennings played 656 times for Spurs, became a club hero, was Footballer of the Year, won the FA Cup, the League Cup and, in 1972, the Uefa Cup.
Tottenham beat Wolves in the two-legged final and Jennings recalled legendary manager Bill Nicholson greeting his players after the second leg at White Hart Lane with the words: “Boys, I’ve just been in next door to tell the Wolverhampton team that the best team lost tonight.
“You’ve another game on Saturday.”
Nicholson, from Yorkshire, was terse.
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This was interesting because the football Nicholson instructed his players to produce was anything but. It was fluent, attractive, modern.
And Nicholson’s captain was often Danny Blanchflower. Blanchflower would take 10, maybe 20, minutes to explain that he himself, Danny Boy, Danny from Bloomfield in east Belfast, he, no, not him, he was not terse.
Blanchflower experienced football as an expressionist. As Jennings said when Blanchflower became manager of Northern Ireland: “Danny loved the underdog. At our first meeting he told us we were boring people to tears with 1-0, 2-1 losses. ‘Let’s go out and entertain,’ he said, ‘lose 5-4!’”
These two contrasting philosophies nevertheless combined at Tottenham to win the first Double of the 20th century in 1960-61 and the first European trophy won by a British club two years later. This was ‘glory, glory Tottenham Hotspur’ and it delighted Spurs fans for a generation.
Reading John Greechan’s absorbing new biography of Ange Postecoglou, Revolution (Birlinn publishing), an echo of that historic Nicholson-Blanchflower contrast could be heard in so many of the anecdotes concerning Postecoglou’s career, his personality and his uncompromising quest for stylish substance.
There are hints of Nicholson’s demeanour in Postecoglou’s relationship with his players, which is deliberately cool, yet inspirational. Thomas Broich, the talented German midfielder Postecoglou persuaded to leave Nurnberg for Brisbane Roar, and who is now head of methodology at Hertha Berlin, tells Greechan that Postecoglou is “authoritarian almost” in his football.
“He’s relentless. And only perfection will do. He can be very, very grumpy, actually. It’s not easy to satisfy him.”
But Broich’s admiration for Postecoglou is clear. While his training and playing regime is demanding and requires physical and attitudinal adjustment, it is also rewardingly ambitious and, ultimately, convincing to both players and supporters.
But it is a process, an idea, and as such Postecoglou has repeatedly run into questions – at club and national level in Australia, in Japan and initially in Scotland, where Celtic won three of his first seven league games in charge and sat sixth in the table.
But Postecoglou pulled through, won five trophies in two seasons; Celtic were assertive but unlucky against Real Madrid in the Champions League.
‘Big Ange’ carried the club with him and when Greechan quotes Postecoglou saying: “The pursuit of winning and trophies, without attaching any meaning to what you’re doing, is like chasing the wind,” it sounds like Blanchflower.
When Greechan also says: “Postecoglou was one of the first to adopt the full five-lane approach to attacking,” it sounds like something of which Blanchflower would approve.
Now the 58-year-old, born in Athens, raised in Melbourne, has brought his inverted full-backs and disciplined tactical freedom to the terrain of Nicholson and Blanchflower. Again there was scepticism when Postecoglou was appointed as Antonio Conte’s successor at the end of a Spurs season that nosedived alarmingly – and in the midst of a summer in which Harry Kane finally departed.
Fan antipathy towards chairman Daniel Levy was high and then he introduced Postecoglou. It wasn’t quite “Arsene Who?”, but it might have been had Postecoglou arrived from Yokohama Marinos directly rather than via Celtic.
Arsene Wenger joined Arsenal from Japanese club Nagoya Grampus Eight in 1996 to loud doubts, even within the club. He soon erased them. It was the same year Postecoglou took his first coaching job, at the club he had previously captained, South Melbourne Hellas.
The ‘Hellas’, now gone, was recognition of the Greek immigrant community in which Postecoglou was raised. It gave him an understanding of what it is to be an outsider and even in Australia, where soccer was low on the sports agenda, he had to overcome hesitation and misgivings. Postecoglou opened doors with his work; no one opened them for him.
Before Celtic’s Scottish League Cup victory over Rangers at Hampden Park in February, Postecoglou again felt it necessary to restate his credentials, explaining how he retains his stability in the tumultuous atmosphere of a Glasgow derby.
“It’s been my job for 26 years,” he said. “When a pilot lands a plane he knows what he’s doing, you’re not making that up as you go along. I like to think after 26 years I know what I’m doing.”
Given it is Arsenal-Tottenham next Sunday, this kind of self-assurance is timely. It’s Liverpool the week after.
Today it is Sheffield United in north London. If Spurs win, it will mean the undefeated start to the Premier League season continues. Three wins and a draw have Spurs second in the table.
Sheffield United brings back a memory of last season’s grim FA Cup exit at Bramall Lane, which destabilised Conte. Postecoglou has already suffered one wobble – the League Cup loss on penalties at Fulham, when he made nine changes and peeved fans. Spurs have not won so many trophies they can afford to go out of a competition in August. Fulham got Norwich at home in the next round.
Such nights heap pressure on league form. Fortunately – or perhaps consequently – the flowing 5-2 victory at Burnley four days later doused some anger at the Craven Cottage selection. In general, Spurs fans have a skip in the step.
If Heung-Min Son is representative, so too have the players. After scoring a hat-trick at Turf Moor, Son told Australian TV about his initial thoughts on Postecoglou.
“I’m so grateful working with him, as a player but also as a human being,” Son said. “He’s giving so much good information to us – as a human, as a manager – so we are happy to be working with him.
“Hopefully, he’s also happy.”
It feels like he is, it feels like they all are. The resistance Postecoglou has encountered throughout his coaching career may not be there at Spurs.
Perhaps after Mourinho, Nuno and Conte, they’ve had enough functionalism, they want to be free, to be Nicholson and Blanchflower’s Tottenham again – discipline with flow and meaning.
Ange Postecoglou, a 20th century man, a 21st century coach: he could be the one Spurs have been looking for.
