
Join one of the best Tottenham Hotspur Supporters forums on the interweb, Discuss the ins and outs of our great club with like minded spurs fans from around the world. Please note, if you are easily offended, this forum is not for you.
This is really interesting, I had no idea.A story making the rounds.
Sharing it here. Addresses the origin of his playing philosophy.
What a breath of fresh air Ange is.
Hey @GNev2 - just reflecting on your comments re Postecoglou and his tactics. Particularly about him emulating Guardiola; though without looking I’m certain others will have already moved to illustrate that Ange was applying this tactic at Yokahoma back in 2019…
Pep first used the tactic when at Bayern, when he put Lahm in there. But this wasn’t the first time the tactic was used… Cruyff is credited with the original decades before Pep. Cruyff who also happens to be one of Ange’s principle sources of inspiration…
Simple open and shut case then? ‘Pie eyed child falls in love with attacking football and seeks to recreate it…’
Not quite. Being a full back yourself Gary, you’ll know about the inception of the attacking fullback : first seen in Hungary in the early 1950s…
Gustav Sebes implemented it. Ferenc Puskas and Laslo Budai were key to this system. Budai hugged the touchline as the winger and Puskas was deployed as an inside forward while Buzansky and Lantos would make the overlapping runs… who better then to pass on an attacking system?
Legendary footballer Ferenc Puskas, of course!
When Postecoglou was Captain of South Melbourne Hellas at 24 yrs old, Puskas came in speaking no English… but he could speak Greek from his time managing Panathinaikos. There was no interpreter at the time…
You guessed it: Puskas would deliver the teamtalk in Greek and Ange would translate it to English.
What’s more - Ange was half playing, half coaching, he was also his driver, for 3 years they spent countless hours together. And Puskás had a profound impact on his life and method
So back in the 80’s Ange is playing as an attacking fullback under a system he is helping Puskas implement.
Who better then to understand the plight of a fullback in such an attacking system?
"I'd get exposed all the time with three players attacking me because our wingers wouldn’t come back. We played with wingers back then. We’re talking the 80s, 4-4-2 was the game.”
“You guys know it better than me in England. That filtered down to Australia because we had a lot of British expats and everyone was playing 4-4-2.
[Puskas] goes, ‘No, no, we’re going to play with wingers’. No one had played with wingers for years, but that’s how we played.”
“Our wingers were told not to come back. I think if we had experienced players, and they were getting exposed, especially defenders, they would be saying, ‘I’m not doing this’. There would have been real resistance.”
"But because we were a young group and he was Ferenc Puskas, we went, ‘OK, let’s do this’. We were champions, we ended up winning it, but we loved it. We loved playing like that because we weren't worried about making a mistake or conceding a goal.”
“As long as we won, at the end of the day, he didn’t care about the rest of it. I just thought to myself, what a fantastic outlook to have…
because as a manager you're kind of bogged down by all these things as much as the players are of failure, of things not going right, of potentially getting the sack.”
"All these things are there to stop you actually playing the football you want your team to play. That had an effect on me of, ‘OK, that’s the kind of manager I want to be.’
That's all in theory, then you get in a job and you realise all these things but I’ve tried to resist that as much as I can with all my teams. Play football the fans want to see, play football the players want to play and provide the structure that's going to make you successful"
Quite the reply to the comments made by Keane and yourself… you’re a decent man, so I know you won’t have meant to slight another professional and decent man in Ange. But it’s difficult to watch Sky sometimes with Keane making comments about Spurs being “arrogant” for daring…
To play the football that Ange wants to play.
Then comment’s from yourself that we are simply emulating Pep.
If our attacking structure is similar to Pep’s, then it is because the source of inspiration is similar.
You’re not a lazy man, so I’m sure you’ll be less perfunctory in your comments on Spurs and Ange going forward.
At any rate, I look forward to Spurs being spoken about with a little respect again and I back Ange to earn his spurs.
Rather than Keane using our name as an insult.
@Billie_T you might appreciate this thread x
Tottenham's seventh league win of the season never looked in doubt on Monday as Postecoglou set a record of 23 points earned from his first nine Premier League fixtures in charge, surpassing Mike Walker and Guus Hiddink.
Only eight sides in Premier League history have started a campaign with more, with four of them going on to win the title, three ending second and one ending third.
Lol, bless them... It must be a super slow news day.so it begins
![]()
Errrrrmmm... OK... Thanks Ali...?
Are they touring Asia or the US or wherever? If so tack these three more games on to a crowded preseasonErrrrrmmm... OK... Thanks Ali...?
I get the Ang Celtic links, but why is this news...? I must be missing something...