Some wise man said that football he will always give you what you deserve in the end. At the age of 57, Angelos Postekoglou is certainly not at the end of his difficult journey, but he can easily confirm the above statement, as in recent years the sport has really generously offered him what he was entitled to for many years. Titles, recognition and now the reins of one of the most important teams in the Premier League, Tottenham.

Postekoglou was born on 27 August 1965 in Greece and his family immigrated to Australia at the age of 5. His football career in the unknown Australian league was quite significant: from 1984 to 1993 he made 193 appearances for South Melbourne Ellas, winning two championships in 1984 and 1991. At the same time, he was the team captain and also made four appearances. from the national team.

He took his first coaching steps in the same team, where he spent four years (1996-2000). He celebrated two titles as well as the Oceania Cup and then captained Australia’s Hope national team for seven years (2000–2007).

His only – bitter – introduction to Greek football came in March 2008, when he was on the bench for Panachaki, from which he left almost as a loser in December of that year, when Alexis Kougias took over the team from Kostas. Makris.

His journey took him back to Australia, where he captained the national team, among other things, then to Japan, from there to Scotland and Celtic, and now the last stop is London and Tottenham.

His whole life is a journey… One that began during the years of the junta, when his parents decided to leave Greece in search of a better future in Melbourne. Little Angelo was then marked with a number. It was 24, the immigration number he had when he arrived in his new country. He still has a photo of a little boy holding a card with the number 24, which replaced his name for a while.

“I was proud of my origin”

After five years in his new homeland, his surname became Postekos to sound more English. “At that time it was fashionable to shorten your name if you were Greek. I never liked it and never used it. I was proud of my origins, but when it came time to get my first passport and first driver’s license, I couldn’t do anything about it,” the new Tottenham manager, whom he really made a career under his Greek surname, will tell in an interview.

A few days ago, Postecoglou won his fifth of six home trophies he could claim in Scotland in his two years there. Today he was officially unveiled as the new manager of Tottenham Hotspur.

A Celtic manager who has won multiple titles is nothing new, but in his case the circumstances were different. Postecoglou didn’t inherit a championship team in need of minor tweaks like, say, Brendan Rodgers before him. In the season before the Greek-Australian took over, the atmosphere in the team was poor as they failed to win the championship after nine consecutive series. Celtic were knocked out of the Rangers Cup too, Ross County knocked them out of the League Cup and their fans were clamoring for their heads to fall.

Manager Neil Lennon was fired and the team’s chief executive also resigned. His replacement lasted only two months. Celtic were without a coach for about 100 days until they found a solution from the other side of the world… A solution that was not well received by the fans as for most it was Angelos Postecoglu’s name, except that it was hard to pronounce. , is also unknown.

But for him it was a new challenge. A new journey into the unknown, like the ones he’s been making all his life. From Greece to Australia, from there back to Greece and then to Japan.

“I can’t believe what my parents went through,” he once said. “They took their family to the other side of the world on a ship that took 30 days to reach a country whose language they did not know, they did not know the soul, they did not have a home or a job. People say they go to another country for a better life. My parents didn’t have a better life, they went to Australia to give me a chance at a better life. I still remember how my mother cried many nights in despair.”

The father of the family Dimitris, like most emigrants, worked hard. Football was his salvation and salvation. On Sundays, he took his son to the South Melbourne Hellas club, set up by Greeks looking for fortune in Australia. Church in the morning, football in the afternoon. It was the rhythm of their life.

“As a kid, I just wanted to fit in. I didn’t necessarily like the fact that I was from another country and had a very long last name that no one could easily pronounce. For a boy, the best way to get involved in sports was sports,” recalls Postekoglu.

Football was not just a game, it was his only chance to get closer to his father, his hero as he described him.

He retired at 27 due to an injury. He won the Australian Championship (his coach was the great Ferenc Puskas), but deep down he always knew that his future was in coaching.

Fear of failure

But there was fear. And this is again the merit of his father. What if they fail? What would she say about him? Despite doubts and worries, he himself gave the answer in the championships he won with South Melbourne.

His father rarely spoke to him. After all, he was an old school man who was hesitant to reveal his feelings. But he always emphasized to his friends how proud he was of Angelos, and they passed it on to him. That was enough for him…

The path he followed was not an easy one. He was fired from the Australian youth team after seven years, then drifted off into the toxicity of Greek football, where he left as a loser. He returned nearly bankrupt to Australia, where he was forced to stay at his mother-in-law’s house for eight months to survive.

Brisbane Roar gave him another chance in 2009 when he started all over again. He won two championships in 2011 and 2012 and experts say he fielded the best team in Australian football history. Melbourne Victory followed, and then the Australian team, which he led to the 2014 and 2018 World Cups, and in 2015 he won the Asian Cup. Champion of Japan with Yokohama, Champion of Scotland two seasons in a row with Celtic.

All this… in the name of the father. “The root and foundation of who I am is no longer with me,” he wrote in Athletes Voice. “His voice is in my head. The flame he lit is still there. I must continue to honor his sacrifices.”

Now the bar has been raised even higher as he faces the challenge of surviving the arena of the Premier League’s monsters. But it seems that Postecoglu spent his whole life learning to fight and emerge victorious…