The Argentine lifted the club to new heights during his tenure in north London, and really should have been brought back in the summer of 2023
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Time is running out for Ange Postecoglou. If his Tottenham side fail to reach the Europa League semi-finals with victory at Eintracht Frankfurt on Thursday, he will almost certainly not be in charge for the 2025-26 season. He may be lucky to even reach the end of this current campaign.
No party wanted it to end this way. After Postecoglou's first few months in the job, it seemed inconceivable we would reach this place. There was a time when 'Ange-mania' ruled the country and his Spurs side briefly resembled football's Harlem Globetrotters. Alas, that feels like a generation ago now.
Postecoglou previously outlined his confidence in bucking the trend of Tottenham's recent failures by declaring he always wins trophies in his second season. Yet he now stares down the same barrel that took out the likes of Antonio Conte, Jose Mourinho, Nuno Espirito Santo and Mauricio Pochettino. Three of those names were carted out the back door and supporters were glad to see them go, but one stands out still to this day as the outlier.
Pochettino's sacking in November 2019, less than half a year after he guided Tottenham to their first-ever and only Champions League final – a phrase still mental to see, write, hear or say – is still contentious among fans and critics alike. There's no doubt the Argentine's message in the dressing room wasn't being received the same way and he appeared burnt out on some level, admitting before that defeat to Liverpool in Madrid that he would stand down from the job if Spurs were crowned champions of Europe, but it was the first sign of trouble the club had really run in to during the majority of his five-year stay.
What's more, Pochettino was open to returning in 2023 when they instead changed path and picked Postecoglou, while he has spoken lately of his desire to come back to Tottenham. Spurs thought they had closure of this chapter with the early success of the Australian, only to now find themselves in a more visceral crisis than ever. It feels as if the last two years have been wasted.
Follow GOAL on WhatsApp! 🟢📱Getty Images SportWhy Postecoglou got the job
Conte's infamous tirade after what proved his final Spurs game, lashing out at his players, the board and the media, brought to the surface all of the club's underlying issues. The key takeaway was this was not an institution serious about winning, even if the main point of screaming and shouting was to deflect from the head coach's own shortcomings. Both things can be true, mind.
There was still more of the 2022-23 season for Tottenham to stumble through too. They actually sat fourth in the Premier League at the time of Conte's outburst, and though some of the sides below them had games in hand, they were still in a strong position to compete for another year of Champions League football. The club got it all wrong though, deciding to place Conte's trusted assistant Cristian Stellini in caretaker charge. A 6-1 humbling at top-four rivals Newcastle in which the hosts went five goals up in the first 25 minutes was the end of his reign, and so Ryan Mason stepped in for the final few weeks, navigating Spurs to eighth, just outside the European spots altogether.
The mood around the club was mutinous. Matchday protests against chairman Daniel Levy started to grow, while chants to bring back Pochettino grew louder with each passing game. When Spurs' pitch-side host Paul Coyte introduced their season highlights after their final home game, a 3-1 loss to Brentford, the poor man was loudly booed.
Levy and Co knew they had to get the next appointment right, they had to leave behind the idea of finding quick-fix solutions and focus on making Spurs a plucky team who were easy on the eye. They initially looked at Julian Nagelsmann, Luis Enrique and Arne Slot, but couldn't strike deals for any of them. Pochettino, meanwhile, was at no point under serious consideration despite the public outcry.
Postecoglou, fresh off a successful two-year stint at Celtic where he brought trophies and entertainment in equal amount, was interested though, and in June 2023, he became the Premier League's first Australian manager.
AdvertisementGetty Images SportRise and fall of 'Ange-mania'
There was scepticism amongst the Tottenham fanbase even before Postecoglou signed on the dotted line. A short-lived '#NoToPostecoglou' movement on social media was quickly drowned out, though concerns did remain over his lack of experience having only managed clubs in Australia, Japan and Scotland.
Nevertheless, a Spurs fandom desperate for joy went away on a voyage of discovery and found plenty of material, both tactical and personal, to warm to Postecoglou. His footballing philosophy was interesting and unique, while his man-management seemed out of this world. Juxtaposed against the relentless bitterness of Conte and Mourinho, Postecoglou seemed like the everyman.
His first competitive match in charge of Tottenham was a battling 2-2 draw at Brentford, who Spurs finished only one point ahead of in the season prior. It was seen as a sign that they would not necessarily have to forfeit steeliness to play the Aussie's way. The travelling fans chanted Postecoglou's name throughout, even though the man himself was sheepish about it and felt he had to earn that right first: "It means a lot, but I'm not comfortable with it. You love what it means. For the most part it's blind faith. I haven't earned it yet. Hopefully when the day comes that we deliver something it will mean even more. I'm not dismissive of it and I'm very appreciative of it, but it reminds me of the responsibility that I have to repay that faith."
Ten games into the 2023-24 Premier League campaign, there was reason to believe. Tottenham were top of the table and unbeaten, all the while playing the most attractive football in the land. That, though, proved to be the apex of Postecoglou's stint. Up next were Pochettino's Chelsea, who were already veering towards crisis amid the Argentine's flirtations with his former club. Nevertheless, the Blues ran out 4-1 winners on a night where key players James Maddison and Micky van de Ven sustained long-term injuries, while Cristian Romero and Destiny Udogie were both sent off. The match was also famed for Postecoglou playing the highest defensive line possible with only nine men in order to squeeze the game, leading to his proud "it's just who we are, mate," quote.
In Postecoglou's first 10 league games, he amassed an impressive 26 points. The following 60 have yielded only 77, meaning a quarter of all his total gained came in that whirlwind haze at the beginning of his reign. Teams have also figured out how to play and beat Spurs with relative ease, too – you'll always be able to swarm them, there'll always be space at the back post, there'll always be attackers hiding behind players on the edge of the pitch. What was once an evolution of tiki-taka has become a completely redundant style which forces Tottenham's square stars into round holes.
Spurs had hoped Postecoglou would work out as a long-term solution having handed him a four-year deal, while the 59-year-old admitted he would like to settle down with his family somewhere having travelled all over the world during the last decade. You can dress it up as a gamble worth taking given a club in their position – technically part of the traditional 'Big Six' even if they don't spend or act like it – but they have failed to heed past warnings.
Getty Images SportPochettino's 'sliding doors'
Let's rewind and delve into why Pochettino was not considered a contender for the Spurs job when he was out of work and they needed a manager in 2023. Both he and Levy maintain they still enjoy a good relationship which even borders on friendship. The Argentine was about a year into a sabbatical following his exit from Paris Saint-Germain, where he learnt punching down isn't always as fun as punching up. If you changed his 'Tottenham' experience on his CV to a club of similar standing in another country, say a Borussia Dortmund or a Roma, he would certainly have been an option worth thinking about.
Perhaps Levy was aware that the context was too overpowering, which is admittedly a fair assumption to have made. To go back to Pochettino would have been an easy decision and one that would have widely been viewed as out of emotion and caving to fan pressure. It's the job of the board to remove such sentiment and look at situations more rationally. GOAL understands Pochettino was interested in the job immediately after Conte's sacking, but after several weeks of silence when it appeared the club were looking elsewhere, he tempered down that feeling as well.
Instead, Pochettino, desperate to work in England again and reinvigorated from a year out of the game, took the Chelsea gig to the annoyance of fans from both clubs. Despite a rocky start (as is the case with every team he's managed), he steered the Blues to a Carabao Cup final and a respectable sixth-placed finish in the Premier League. He restored his reputation as one of the best coaches for developing young players, with Cole Palmer his most notable success, and his side ended up only three points behind Spurs despite the vast difference of optics. Days after the season ended, however, Pochettino mutually agreed to leave Chelsea.
That Pochettino, despite fan unrest against himself and Chelsea's relatively new owners, managed to navigate an inexperienced team thrown together haphazardly through such turmoil was a sure enough sign he wouldn't have been overwhelmed by a return to Tottenham, who had consciously refreshed the playing squad and lowered the average age considerably. By the end of 2023-24, the only players on the books at Spurs who Pochettino worked with prior were Son Heung-min, Ben Davies, Giovani Lo Celso, Japhet Tanganga and Oliver Skipp. A new cast of front-end stars had been acquired in the half-decade he had been gone, most of them ideal for his brand of football.
Tottenham were on the hunt for a manager of Pochettino's calibre and trajectory when he arrived in 2014, yet maybe the one with all these scars and bruises may have been better after all. Whatever would have happened if he took the role again, it couldn't have gone any worse than it has under Postecoglou.
AFPNever-ending flirtation
Throughout his Chelsea reign, Pochettino played down his emotional connection with the Blues, yet played up that of rivals Tottenham. It made for one of the season's stranger subplots.
After leaving Chelsea, Pochettino agreed to take charge of the United States ahead of the 2026 World Cup on home soil, giving him another break from the vigorous demands of the club game. Back in March, he agreed to a roundtable interview with the English press, during which he confirmed his ambition to manage Spurs in the future.
"In the bottom of my heart I still feel the same," he said. "I would like one day to come back. Not because of my ego, it's because my feeling is I would like one day to win with Tottenham. We were so close. The problem was this type of journey creates a lot of friction for different reasons. Also, I made mistakes, you know? But the good thing is when you are clever you learn from your mistakes. It's like when a relationship finishes, I feel empty, I feel so disappointed, with everyone, but also with myself because I didn't manage well and when that happens it's partly my responsibility.
"I think now Tottenham is a club with an expectation to win because if you see the facilities, the training ground or stadium, now you can see it is about winning trophies. That is why I would like one day to come back, but if that doesn't happen, it doesn’t happen. [There are] all the possibilities again to build something special. That is my feeling and it didn't change."
There were suggestions Pochettino deliberately planted this story amid pressure on Postecoglou, but as explained by ' Tom Allnutt on 'The Tottenham Way' podcast, the topic of Spurs only came up at the very end of the roundtable, with most of the focus on the U.S. and Chelsea. It was nevertheless claimed Pochettino was happy and comfortable to delve into Tottenham, that he was ready to say his piece.