Revolution (eBook)

Chapter 2

O CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN

UNITED by a common language and a love of go-forward football intended to run ragged any opposition fool enough to expect even half a heartbeat of respite, the Galloping Major and the overlapping/underlapping/always attacking young full back were certainly kindred spirits. The legendary Ferenc Puskás, who led South Melbourne to four major trophies during his three years as manager, never found club captain Ange Postecoglou – his unofficial chauffeur, translator and apprentice – anything less than eager to lap up any advice, experience or wisdom he felt like passing on. It’s hardly surprising that many a friend and former teammate detects a hint of the Puskás philosophy in much of what Postecoglou has achieved as a manager.

It’s important to note, however, that influences are just that. Vectors likely to affect the trajectory of a career, a path, a life. Some carry more weight than others; a few are large enough to generate their own gravitational field. But success in football isn’t guaranteed for anyone falling into the orbit of a super-massive intellect. Nobody makes it in this game simply by wholesale adoption of another gaffer’s game model.

To get an idea of the forces that shaped Postecoglou as a coach, then, you have to look at the entirety of his playing career. The transition from promising newcomer to undisputed leader on the pitch. The pressures that inevitably followed his ascension to the captaincy – at just 22 years old – of an institution held in almost religious regard by Melbourne’s devoted Greek community. The relentless push to improve conditions and raise expectations of everyone at ‘his’ club. And, crucially for anyone trying to develop the emotional intelligence needed to lead any group, learning to tailor his message to suit the audience, acting as a conduit between dressing room and boardroom.

Any visitor to South Melbourne’s Lakeside ground, a pleasant enough community stadium – despite the athletics track – that is also home to ‘Combat Australia’s National Performance Centre’, quickly learns just how enormous a figure Postecoglou is in the story of a club stubbornly clinging on to its position of historical influence, despite the best corporate efforts to rid Aussie football of its ethnic backstory. He’s front and centre of the painting commissioned to mark the club’s Team of the Century, where he fills the left back berth. Current club president Nicholas Maikousis is only half joking when he tells Ange – frequently – that he was probably lucky to make the starting line-up. Although he does qualify this by insisting that Postecoglou should have pipped Manny Poulakakis in the poll for head coach of this fantasy team.

Look down the honours board at Lakeside and you’ll see that, standing apart from a healthy collection of cup wins and regional competition victories, they boast four National Soccer League titles. Postecoglou was captain for two of those, in 1984 and 1991. And manager for the back-to-back triumphs in 1998 and 1999. Few have made a greater contribution. Starting with his first-team breakthrough as a 17-year-old.

Old team-mates recall a player who used to bomb forward from the left back position. A guy who bristled against the need to work in a bank to supplement his meagre part-time pay at South. An Aussie bloke proud of his Greek heritage and capable of conversing with the old-time supporters – and directors – in their native tongue. A character who took to the captaincy naturally enough, whether that be raising important issues with the board or arranging end-of-season jolly boys’ outings to some truly glamorous locations. And, of course, a footballing anorak with an inexhaustible appetite for information on the game he loved.

To paint a picture of just how big South Melbourne were when Ange was coming through the ranks, just take a look at some of the names recruited as manager over the years. A few years before Postecoglou broke through as a player, the great Tommy Docherty – a former Manchester United and Scotland boss who also happened to be one of the game’s great raconteurs – was lured Down Under to take charge for a season. This was a club who always seemed to find big money, relatively speaking, to attract celebrity coaching talent from abroad or hoover up the best gaffers on the Australian scene. Postecoglou was promoted into the first-team squad by the late Len McKendry, mastermind of that 1984 title and regarded as one of the finest coaches in the history of the Australian game, then served under club legend John Margaritis, before taking instruction from Puskás – the magical Magyar whose expansive attacking game delivered Grand Final glory in 1991 – and finally Frank Arok, who made the skipper his assistant when injury brought the defender’s playing career to a premature end.

In terms of glamour and gravitas, of course, none of the managers who came and went during Postecoglou’s playing days could hold a candle to Puskás, whose arrival in 1989 represented a truly remarkable piece of recruitment by the South Melbourne board. Universally regarded as one of the greatest footballers ever to lace up boots, his exploits with Real Madrid and Hungary inspiring a rare degree of global fame in a game on the cusp of a new era, the great man’s name still adorns the FIFA award for the year’s most beautiful goal in world football. Never quite the same force as a manager, he was hardly some no-hoper cashing in on his playing reputation when he took the Melbourne offer. After all, under his management, Panathinaikos had reached the European Cup Final at Wembley in 1971, the all-Greek squad losing to a legendary Ajax team – Cruyff, Neeskens et al. – completing the first leg of their hat-trick in football’s most prestigious club competition. Think of landing Puskás, then, as the equivalent to the current South board persuading Zinedine Zidane to take charge for their crack at life in the National Second Tier.

That was certainly the case in terms of attention generated. Postecoglou has spoken about how this period in his playing career gave him a first glimpse of what genuine sporting celebrity looked like; the sight of parents thrusting babies into the arms of the smiling old gent, before reaching for their cameras, underlined the euphoria capable of being generated by this silly little kids’ game. Growing up, he’d already fallen under the spell of the odd superstar himself, idolising former Arsenal forward Charlie George and Newcastle United legend Malcolm ‘Supermac’ Macdonald during their brief stints in the old National Soccer League. But, with Puskás, there was a realisation that such devotion wasn’t inspired merely by his medal count, impressive though it may have been. It was the swagger of the man. The fact that he had always been synonymous with flair and adventure, in a game always caught on the horns of a struggle between pragmatism and purist pursuit of excitement.

Postecoglou, who had been a ball boy at Middle Park and a leader all the way through the youth ranks, was arguably the perfect captain for any new manager to inherit. Someone who innately understood both the ambitions and limitations of the club. That fact that Puskás could fall back on the Greek he learned at Panathinaikos whenever his limited grasp of English failed him, knowing that the skipper would step in to translate, was an added bonus. For both.

‘Ange used to pick Puskás up and drive him to training,’ said former South stalwart Steve Blair, already established at centre half when this Postecoglou kid joined the first-team group. ‘Of course, Ange would pick his brains. He’d be talking about this and that. Puskás didn’t really care for people like me, a centre half, a defender, don’t worry about them. He was just all attack, attack, attack! But Ange was a sponge for any information he could gather. You have to look at all these influences on Ange. If you understand from here, how he’s got to where he is now, playing the system that he is playing, it’s no secret. Because he’s been indoctrinated with this from the greatest.’

For his part, Postecoglou puts Puskás second only to his own father in the degree of influence he had on his career. He speaks with a mix of affection and wonder about how he used to ferry the living legend around in ‘my crappy old car’. Not that Puskás ever complained about getting lifts to training in a banger that had seen better days; everyone who was at Melbourne during that era stresses the humility of a man who had every right to make big-time demands and act the diva.

In terms of the football played under Puskás, well, even the uber-adventurous Ange used to get a little bit frustrated about the manager’s insistence that both wingers should stay high and wide, leaving the full backs open to being overrun. Though he did enjoy being encouraged to join the attack himself. Something his old team-mates can laugh about now.

Former Socceroos captain Paul Wade let out a guffaw as he recalled: ‘As a team-mate, it’s interesting, because Ange played as a full back. And he loved getting forward. But wasn’t so interested in getting back to defend. How times have changed, eh? All right, Ange, we’ll get back for you, ya miserable bastard . . . but he was such a good captain. There were times when you wouldn’t know he was on the park.’

That doesn’t sound, it is suggested, like an ideal quality for someone...