Tottenham: How Ferenc Puskas shaped Ange Postecoglou’s coaching philosophy

Ange Postecoglou has always felt like a “coach disguised as a player” and her management profession dates back well before her playing days for South Melbourne Hellas and Australia.

Boss Postecoglou was shaped by his father Jim and never looked back from the moment he took charge of a team of friends at Prahran High School at the age of 12.

Given the strong influences throughout his acting career, Hungary’s icon Ferenc Puskas was probably the most important, and an as-yet-unreleased documentary, Puskas in Australia, sheds further light on the pair’s fascinating relationship.

Produced by Australian journalist Tony Wilson, the film details Puskas’ spell managing Hellas, culminating in their NSL Grand Final victory over Croatia in Melbourne in 1991.

“Get off the pitch, dad, you’ll be arrested,” Postecoglou recalls telling his father, who was joining in the celebrations after Hellas won the chaotic penalty shoot-out (Postecoglou impressively kicked the penalty kick into the top corner to keep them alive).

The image of Postecoglou and Puskas, his stomach rising above his belt holding the trophy aloft, remains one of the Tottenham manager’s most treasured images. Postecoglou acted as translator and driver for Puskas, who spoke five languages, including Greek, but only basic English, and daily training rides formed part of his football training. “I finally got really close to it,” Postecoglou says.

Postecoglou was driving a creaking Datsun 200, but Puskas, whose utter modesty was remembered by every one of the documentary’s contributors, was utterly unconcerned, even as the car began to fall apart.

“I literally had to take out my window knocker and slide it over, and he would engage the latch, make his own window, hand it back, and I was making my window,” Postecoglou says. “Cristiano Ronaldo [of his day]But he didn’t care.”

Puskas’ easy-going demeanor and enjoyment of the finer things in life also come to the fore (his former players remember him once eating a plate of pasta intended for the entire team), and Postecoglou recalls the old Datsun taking a flat while driving from Puskas to the airport.

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Puskas did not move from his seat as Postecoglou lifted the car and tried to change the tire, his clothing slowly becoming covered with oil.

Postecoglou’s role brings back memories of Jose Mourinho’s formative years with Bobby Robson at Barcelona.

In an interview in July, Postecoglou said that his role as Puskas’ mediator allowed him to “semi-coach” the team, paving the way for him to take over as manager of Hellas in 1996. What he learned from Puskas as a coach was the importance of “having a unified dressing room that cares about something beyond the result.” Ensuring his teams have a greater purpose than just winning is now a cornerstone of Postecoglou’s philosophy.

There are other attractive migration paths in their approach. Postecoglou shares a full commitment to attacking football with Puskas, and their title-winning Hellas team was made up of young players who were probably more willing to follow the manager’s unorthodox instructions rather than experienced minds.

At a time when all other teams in Australia were playing 4-4-2, Puskas insisted on using two wingers and berated them for backtracking; he happily took the risk of being outnumbered by Postecoglou and the other defenders.

As a coach, Postecoglou also disdained following trends and built his winning teams around a core of impressionable young players.

But what impressed the young Postecoglou the most was Puskas’ mentality rather than the tactics.

Considered one of the greatest players of all time, Puskas was humble to the core and completely at ease with his players making mistakes or conceding goals.

“As long as we won, at the end of the day, he didn’t care about the rest,” Postecoglou said in July. “I thought to myself, ‘What an amazing perspective to have.’ “That made an impression on me: ‘Okay, I want to be a manager like that, too.'”

Today, there’s also something of Puskas in Postecoglou’s zen touchline demeanor; That rarely changes, despite his thrilling comebacks, which have occurred repeatedly at Spurs this season.

Speaking about his composure during matches this week, Postecoglou recalled Puskas collapsing in the dugout during the dramatic Grand Final clash.

“He didn’t even move from where he was sitting,” the Spurs manager said. “He said, ‘I’ve played in World Cups, I’ve seen it all, it’s not pressure.’

“And that impressed me. But you can’t fake it, it has to be a part of who you are. Just because the great man can stay so calm on the bench doesn’t mean I will be like him. It has to be a part of your personality.”

In the end, 18 years after Puskas’s death, it was the man rather than the coach that stuck with Postecoglou.

“I loved every minute of it,” he says in the film. “I just sit in the car and talk to him, laugh with him. Part of me wanted to show him who I was.”