The sledge that fuelled Ange Postecoglou to pull off ‘Mission Impossible’... and why this is just the start
“He’s walking into a Mission Impossible job right now”.
That was the declaration from Celtic legend Chris Sutton June 2021 as Ange Postecoglou was announced as the Scottish club’s new manager.
Eleven months on, the Australian manager is being heralded as a miracle worker, having delivered his best Tom Cruise impression to stear Celtic to an improbable Scottish Premiership and Premier Sports Cup double.
Stream The EFL Championship Playoffs LIVE with beIN SPORTS on Kayo. New to Kayo? Try 14-Days Free Now >
In one of the greatest Australian coaching achievements of all time, Postecoglou – written off from the start – inherited a team in calamitous disarray and turned them into a cohesive unit, overhauling the squad and the playing style in a revolution that was as sweeping as it was rapid.
The 56-year-old made a frank admission after securing the league title with a 1-1 draw with Dundee United this morning, telling BBC: “It’s taken the most out of me that’s for sure! It’s almost like two seasons jammed into one, it’s been a rebuilding season and a season to win in one.”
READ MORE
‘Nobody gave us much of a chance’: Ange ‘lost for words’ as Celtic seals Premiership
‘Took bull by the horns’: The Ange ‘brilliance’ that turned Celtic around — UK View
For most Celtic fans, this season had long been written off as a long-awaited rebuilding year. The team had won nine straight league titles before collapsing to a horror 2020-21 campaign where bitter Old Firm rivals Rangers roared to the title by a massive 25-point margin.
The squad included a host of wantaway players who had been convinced – probably mistakenly as it turns out – to stick around for one more season. There were also four expensive loan signings, a desperate bid to prop up a team in need of overhaul.
The Celtic hierarchy was equally concerning. The club had no director of football and the recruitment department also lacked direction, as a series of disappointing roster decisions in recent years indicated. The club spent over 100 days at the end of last season without a coach during a failed pursuit of now Newcastle coach Eddie Howe, with a gentleman’s agreement for him to take over apparently falling apart due to the club’s refusal to allow him full control over his backroom staff.
Enter Postecoglou – not the club’s first choice by some distance, and probably not even their second or third choice either. “The reality is Celtic are taking a colossal gamble at a time when they can’t afford to be taking risks,” Sutton wrote.
Celtic fans had already taken up arms against the board in a string of protests. Postecoglou’s appointment added explosive fuel to the flames of their discontent. Having expected for months that Eddie Howe, widely respected for his impressive work at Bournemouth, would be the man to oversee the rebuild, the Hoops faithful now were forced to swallow the decision to pluck a manager straight out of Japan.
As Postecoglou said: “I’m sure that Google got a helluva battering when my name came up with people trying to figure out who I am.”
Never mind his success in Australia, Asia, and Japan, his experience coaching in Europe was limited to an ill-fated stint in Greece’s third tier. Celtic fans were more than wary – many were downright hostile. Fans of bitter rivals Rangers were jubilant. They had Liverpool legend Steven Gerrard at the helm of a team that was flying and looked all-but-certain to win the league once more.
One phrase was repeated ad nauseum, and not just by rival fans. “Sacked by Christmas” - though many commented privately and publicly that the Australian might not last even that long.
It’s a claim that Postecoglou, in his typical dry fashion, took aim at recently. The mastermind claimed two prestigious gongs for his work at Celtic this season, the PFA and Scottish Football Writers’ Association Manager of the Year awards. But he joked that he missed out on the award he was ‘favourite for’, saying: “I take great pride in it. I didn’t get the one I was favourite for - sacked by Christmas - but I got everything else so it’s okay.”
The club’s lengthy failed pursuit of Howe meant that Postecoglou took the reins with precious little time to reshape the squad in his mould during the off-season. But it didn’t take long for the overhaul to begin. 16 players left the club, including a trio of big-name departures: first-team stars Odsonne Edouard, Kristoffer Ajer and Ryan Christie all quit Celtic. In came a dozen players, including a host on transfer deadline day.
But the loss of so many important players led to immediate concerns. The Athletic’s Kieran Devlin wrote at the time: “…it is incredibly difficult to argue that they leave this summer’s window better than they entered it.
“The dramatic rebuild many touted as being a necessity has simply not happened and it does feel that Postecoglou has been dealt a poor hand for this season.”
If the Australian had been dealt a ‘poor hand’ with his squad, equally unfortunate was the situation off the pitch. He was forced to inherit the existing assistant coaching team rather than bring in his own backroom staff – a similar issue to the one that cost the club Eddie Howe’s services in the first place.
Things soon got even worse in the front office. The club’s long-serving chief executive, Peter Lawwell, stepped down – only for his successor, Dominic McKay, to resign after just 72 days.
Postecoglou had only been handed a rolling 12-month contract by the board, hardly the most inspiring show of faith in the new manager. The turmoil at board level must have left him wondering whether he would see out the year, especially given the results on the pitch.
The club was dumped from the Champions League in July. By late September, they had lost three of their first six league games – including a 1-0 defeat to Rangers in the first Old Firm of the season – and were sitting in sixth. They also lost their first two Europa League group games, including a humiliating 4-0 thrashing at the hands of German club Bayer Leverkusen. Postecoglou’s players were struggling to implement his complex and demanding attacking strategy, and often failed to maintain the intensity he required of his charges. That came as little surprise, given how many had arrived on the eve of the September 1 transfer deadline.
Those mixed early results – and the apparent flaws in Postecoglou’s hyper-attacking system – redoubled the calls from fans and pundits for the Australian to adopt a more pragmatic approach, particularly against elite European opponents.
But he never swayed, not even when injuries struck down key players. And since then, the team’s form has been largely impeccable. The side has not lost a league match since September. Celtic won three of their remaining four Europa League matches but the early defeats saw them exit at the group stage.
Celtic would go on to win the league cup in December, just days before Christmas. By that time, Postecoglou’s name was already being sung loudly and proudly by the fans in a neat twist on the classic tune: Last Christmas.
The green and white half of Glasgow had given their hearts to Postecoglou. Not just for the dazzling attacking displays from his team, with the inverted fullbacks surging forwards and creativity flowing from every corner of the park. But for the Australian’s very personality: his complete refusal to shirk responsibility or to blame referees, to explode in rage or make an ugly scene out of a press conference. Instead, he was calm and unflinchingly honest with journalists, though never afraid of delivering a quipped one-liner, all too often at his own expense.
Fans also loved his respect for the club and its history, and his unerring belief in the project at hand – and that success would follow. As a player and a manager, Postecoglou was always guided by a desire to deliver football his late father Jim would enjoy watching. After a match in August last year, he said: “He’s up there now, but I always envisage him in the stands and think about what he’d say about the team.
“He was never raptured by results, he just wanted to see a certain type of football.”
Perhaps that was why Postecoglou was not rattled by his side’s early form stutters. With many of his initial transfer arrivals paying off, the Australian was backed again in the transfer market in January, in which he signed another five players. In doing so, Postecoglou turned his great weakness into a strength. He had been written off for his lack of European coaching experience, but the Australian turned to his knowledge of Japanese football – earned from his prior coaching stint at Yokohama F Marinos – to sign four Japanese players across two transfer windows: Kyogo Furuhashi, Reo Hatate, Daizen Maeda, and Yosuke Ideguchi.
Besides Ideguchi, the other trio have been exceptional. Furuhashi has been the club’s top scorer with 18 goals in all competitions. Hatate and Maeda have featured 21 times apiece and pitched in a combined 12 goals. In fact, almost all of Postecoglou’s signings have paid off – even the controversial decision to sign goalkeeper Joe Hart, written off by many in the English game as a has-been, or 21-year-old Matt O’Riley who was plucked from League One club MK Dons for £1.5m in January and quickly made an impression.
Celtic’s season would not finish in perfect fashion. They were dumped from the third-tier European competition, the Conference League, in February. In April they were beaten by Rangers in the Scottish Cup semi-final in extra time.
But having entered the year needing to overturn a 25-point league chasm to Rangers, Postecoglou has now secured a wholly remarkable Premiership, plus a league cup to boot.
Postecoglou said: “The dream was always to manage a famous club and make an impact. When something is a lifelong obsession and you finally get there, it’s hard to put into words.”
He doesn’t need the words. The Celtic fans have plenty of them to share – including putting Ange’s name into a second song.
WHAT COMES NEXT
Having initially been signed to a rolling 12-month contract, the club’s first order of business will now likely be to lock in Postecoglou on a longer deal – reward for his brilliant first year at Parkhead. There has already been a significant staffing arrival, with the club signing Mark Lawwell to be their new head of first-team scouting and recruitment. It’s a massive win for the club, with Lawwell having spent the last decade as the City Football Group’s scouting boss, guiding the recruitment for teams like Manchester City and – crucially – Postecoglou’s old side in Yokohama.
Recruitment is sure to be a massive focus for Postecoglou moving forward. Two loanees in Cameron Carter-Vickers from Spurs and Jota from Benfica have been absolute standouts this season, and Celtic will be desperate to ward off significant competition and sign both permanently.
Jota is expected to cost the club €7.5 million to turn his loan deal permanent. Carter-Vickers is set to cost Celtic £6m to pry away from Spurs, with the fee possibly rising as high as £10m with additional add-ons. A £6m fee would make him Celtic’s equal-third most expensive player ever. £10m would put him first.
But Postecoglou looks set to be handed a significant transfer budget for the season, given Celtic’s league success has assured them a place in the Champions League group stage for the first time in five years (with automatic qualification confirmed after Russian clubs were banned from competing).
With that comes an estimated guaranteed payout of €30.3m – with additional prize money for every victory and potential progression in the competition.
It’s a massive financial boon for a club like Celtic. But having been smashed by teams like Bayer Leverkusen in European competition last year, the club must improve significantly in order to compete on Europe’s biggest stage. That is especially the case should Celtic face a heavyweight like Bayern Munich or Paris Saint-Germain in the group stage.
But it’s not just on the continental scale where Celtic face a greater challenge. Rangers – their greatest rivals – look certain to mount an even stronger title bid next season.
Manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst took over the club in November after Steven Gerrard was pried away by Premier League club Aston Villa. The coaching change initially destabilised the club, to Celtic’s benefit. But van Bronkhorst has subsequently improved the team tremendously, guiding them to a first European final in 14 years. Rangers beat Borussia Dortmund, Red Star Belgrade, Braga and RB Leipzig to book their place in the Europa League Final, where they’ll face Socceroo Ajdin Hrustic’s Eintracht Frankfurt. Rangers also reached the final of the Scottish Cup for the first time in six years, only to fall to Hearts. With a full pre-season under the former Rangers, Barcelona and Arsenal player, Rangers are set to pose a much greater challenge to Celtic next time around.
Last week, Postecoglou declared: “We have to be better next year irrespective of what happened this year.
“The way I want teams to play and the training process takes a while for people to get into and I’m hoping next year we will be a stronger team, and I look forward to what that brings.”
So do Celtic fans. So do all of us.