Angel Postecoglou has been linked with potential vacations to Everton and the Japan national team after the World Cup for the past 24 hours. This is really only an indication of the impact the Aussie has had at Celtic and although his success has so far been limited to domestic football, if and when he starts to make an impact at football level Champions League – which seems to be his priority – then the speculation will only intensify.
The front page of the Tokyo edition of Nikkan Sports: Japan’s national team head coach for the next cycle will either be Hajime Moriyasu reprising his role or a foreign coach, with Ange Postecoglou considered the favorite and technical director Sorimachi having already reached out. pic.twitter.com/KwJWIQC26G
— Dan Orlowitz (@aishiterutokyo) November 15, 2022
So we should get used to it and it’s clearly better than the position on the other side of town where Giovanni van Bronckhorst is desperately clinging on, apparently it has something to do with the funds needed to pay him and his coaching absent staff, but who knows or cares?
Ange Postecoglou has made it clear that he wants to make Celtic one of the best teams in the Champions League and knows he will have to give it up for several seasons. He’s had previous football experience in Japan, but he fancied something Celtic could give him and he’s already been to a World Cup with Australia, so the idea of twiddling his thumbs after a tournament in so long as Japan’s next coach wouldn’t be appealing.
Then there’s the link with Everton, where their manager’s lifespan seems to be shrinking all the time and to have any prospect of entering the Champions League on a regular basis, he would have to overtake so many clubs with that experience. already, just to enter the competition once. Then he should do it again.
Ange is not the youngest manager in football and will know he has maybe a decade at most to fulfill his ambitions and he can do it at Celtic. So maybe it’s time for Celtic to reflect, look at his contractual situation and offer him an exceptional new long-term deal that will benefit all parties – the Postecoglou family, the Celtic football club, the players and the supporters – and would in turn be very expensive if (or when) a top Champions League club comes calling looking for Angel to move to them. That’s when we should be worried, not about Brighton, Wolves, Everton or the Japan national team manager’s job.
There are some quotes from Ange Postecoglou in today’s Daily Record where he talks about Celtic dominating the game in Scotland and compares that to the situation in Australia where there is equality of resources and he explains why that frustrates him . He also talks about the Champions League campaign, the loss to Madrid and the frustration of that missed penalty by Josip Juranovic which was potentially his way back into the game he was looking for.
It’s a good insight into how Ange thinks about his football and Celtic are clearly lucky to have him as their manager. At the post-match press conference on Saturday following the 2-1 win over Ross County, Matt Corr was present to represent the Celtic Star. Matt gave Ange a copy of our new book The Celtic Rising ~ 1965: The Year Jock Stein Changed Everything and suggested it might be something he’d like to read on the long flight back to Australia . Ange was delighted with Matt’s gesture and it’s worth noting the similarities to Jock Stein taking over Celtic and Ange doing the same all these years later.
Here is some of what Ange said in this Daily Record article this morning:
“If your goal is simply to be the best house on your street but you live in a neighborhood of thousands of people, you have to look beyond that. It’s not to disrespect the local competition. If what whatever, you hope it raises the bar.
“If we are to raise the level of Scottish football, our top clubs need to get bigger and stronger and hopefully that will lead to more. Instead of just keeping the big clubs on the ground and hoping that makes them best.
“I’m from Australia where we like to equalize sports. People here talk a lot about the disparity in budgets and that it’s unfair and all that. In Australia it’s the other way around, where everyone has the same salary cap, the same resources and the same way of recruiting everyone by draft.
“Every team and supporter thinks they can win and you know what? I got frustrated with that. Because if you want to improve, you can’t. There are rules that stop you.
“What they do is bring the best to a balance. The way I am as a person is ‘Let’s make the best better and try to lift everyone up’. The way it’s going to be in Scotland is for a club like ours to aim to be one of the best clubs in the Champions League. If that means we dominate the local competition, that challenges everyone to be better. This must be our goal.
“My responsibility is to this club. We have 60,000 fans here every week and millions around the world. Why wouldn’t they be successful at Champions League level? That must be my goal. If not is not the case, I am doing this job a disservice.
On the 5-1 loss at the Santiago Bernabéu: “I never doubted myself. I did not enjoy the experience, I was disappointed. How can you benefit from it? People say: ‘It’s Real Madrid, it’s the Bernabeu’ – but we lost 5-1.
“In me, there was still a determination. We took a few hits but we had to have determination to get back on track and be better next time. I was at the World Cup in 2014 and we were down 2-0 against Chile after 10 minutes in our group opener.
“The whole world is watching and I’m like, ‘This could be a long World Cup…you’re totally exposed.’ “arrogance but I knew we could dig in. We lost 3-1 but it was a stunning game. Then we played Holland, who had beaten Spain 5-0, and we lost 3-2.
“Those are defeats, but at no time did I think, ‘I wish I was somewhere else, it could get embarrassing. At 2-0 against Real, I told myself that we had to get back into the game. We get the penalty and miss. It was frustrating and we were disappointed, but I never doubted.