Ange Postecoglou returned to her father. “Get off the field,” he said, “you will be arrested.” The year was 1991 and South Melbourne had won the NSL Grand Final by beating Melbourne Croatia. It was a tiring and ridiculous game. Melbourne Croatia finished the regular season on top, were the better side of the day, took the lead, looked to be heading towards the title but were defeated in the 88th minute. South Melbourne had missed three penalties in the shootout.
Melbourne Croatia batted twice for the match. Postecoglou had to convert the fifth penalty to keep his side in the game. And in sudden death South Melbourne had won it.
Relating to: Postecoglou rejects ‘schoolyard’ Spursy label and tells players to keep the faith
Postecoglou said South Melbourne “is not just a football club; “This place was a refuge.” For people like his father, who fled Greece to Australia in the ’60s, it was a small patch of home where Greek was spoken and souvlaki was always on the grill. So his father joined the field invasion to run alongside his son in the lap of honour.
This was the pinnacle of Postecoglou’s playing career and a moment of great pride. But that season was something more. When Postecoglou lifted the trophy, he didn’t do it alone; he had done this with Ferenc Puskas. The story is told in an unreleased documentary by Australian journalist Tony Wilson. It includes some remarkable footage of Puskas playing in friendly matches played in Australia in the mid-80s. He waddles around, his huge belly pressing against his shirt, and throws perfect 50-yard passes to players who suddenly can’t control them. One moment the ball bounces desperately around a full box on a hard, dusty surface, then it falls to Puskas, who, with the lethargy of genius, caresses the ball into the top right corner with the outside of his left shoe.
Puskas, who had a draw with Honved in the European Cup at that time, decided not to return to Hungary after the Soviet invasion in 1956 and had to leave Greece, where he was coaching Panathinaikos, due to political turmoil. homeless effect. He worked in Spain, Chile, Saudi Arabia and Paraguay, but Australia was where he felt most comfortable. He coached a youth team in the Melbourne suburb of Keysborough for a time, then the reception he received from Greek fans who went to watch South Melbourne persuaded their chairman, George Vasilopoulos, to make him coach.
Although Puskas was fluent in five languages, including Greek, English was not one of them, so he relied on his assistant Jim Pyrgolios and his captain Postecoglou to translate. “There are three possibilities in football,” Puskas said in his first-team speech, as players leaned in eagerly to hear what wisdom this legend could impart. “He can win, he can lose, he can draw.” There was widespread consternation. Was this it? “All he was trying to do was reassure us,” Postecoglou said.
It would be wrong to say Puskas didn’t care – he cried after the Grand Final and once rowed with the entire stand surrounding him – but he did have a healthy sense of perspective. He didn’t care about training in the rain, and Pyrgolios had to secretly attend fitness workouts. Throughout the drama of the 1991 penalty shootout, he sat alone on the bench, smiling affectionately and chewing gum while those around him held their heads and punched the air.
His football was offensive, his coaching style was relaxed and based on technique. Each training session would begin with players pairing up and kicking the ball back and forth for several minutes. His interventions were infrequent and insignificant. “The ball alone does not score goals,” he would say in his broken English. “Must shoot the ball”
Since Puskas did not drive, Postecoglou began working not only as a translator but also as a chauffeur, giving him the opportunity to have long conversations about football. Postecoglou said the most important thing he learned was that “by having a unified dressing room, a dressing room that cares about something beyond the result, you can create something special.”
This seems like a basic point, but in a world obsessed with data driven by technocrats and analysts through lanes and halves, it’s a point worth repeating: A big part of a coach’s job is people management. Postecoglou’s projects for humanity are a central part of his approach. During the recent injury crisis he was able to call on fringe players who had been excluded under previous regimes.
Puskas came from an era when pressing was not universal and he berated forwards who came from behind. How much Postecoglou can learn from him tactically is debatable. Yet they clearly share an attacking ethos, but also something more obscure but perhaps more important to Tottenham.
The road to victory for England in the 1966 World Cup began with Puskas’ 6-3 defeat against Hungary at Wembley in 1953. This forced English football to re-evaluate its tactical assumptions and led to the radicalism of Bill Shankly, Don Revie and Alf Ramsey. Ramsey played full-back in the 6-3 and has always rejected the widespread claim that English football has been defeated by continental sophistication. He insisted Hungary were employing a variant of the push-and-run game used by the Tottenham team he plays for.
Ramsey was never keen on saying anything good came from abroad, but he was right: Arthur Rowe, who led Tottenham to the league title in 1950-51, would get a job in Hungary, but only at the start of the season. II. World War. There was a philosophical harmony there going back to Jimmy Hogan and Peter McWilliam and the spread of the Scottish passing game.
Football history is a collection of these overlapping topics. The idea that clubs have a distinctive style is often misleading. But there is a connection there. By turning to a manager from the other side of the world, Tottenham have reconnected with the philosophy that made them great 70 years ago through Rowe, Puskas and Ramsey. If there is such a thing as club DNA, Postecoglou could be the perfect coach for them.