'I always win things in my second year'

It’s just totally exhilarating. The press conference question that rolls on and on. The interviewer, being stared at by those invisible eyes at the top of Ange’s forehead. Her quest for a headline, a subtext of ‘you’re not that good, are you? Things are a little rough now. How are you feeling about that second year trophy talk you were banging on about?’

And you feel the buried fury in Ange. He’s balled up, unsure of whether to spring out of the press conference tuck and go on the attack. But the reporter keeps on coming, needling, conjuring up spectres of distant silverware, and you see Ange make a decision. The eyes come up, he’s furious, she’s got him, she’s got her headline:

‘If I can answer the question, or are you going to keep asking me, I think .. and I’ll correct myself I don’t ususally win things I always win things in my second year. Nothing’s changed.’

She gives him wiggle room, ‘so you’re seeing enough? … Ange doesn’t want wiggle room. ‘Well I just sort of said it now. I don’t say things if I don’t believe it.’

It’s such an outlandish thing to say. As the injuries mounted and the losses accumulated and Spurs tumbled down the table, it became attached to the Postecoglou name as a punchline — Big Ange — ‘I Always Win Things in My Second Year’. Ha Ha.

The days of Robbie Williams viral videos and terrace anthems were long ago.

But Ange had a plan, as he always does. Once Spurs had avoided relegation, he shifted his steely gaze to the last trophy on the possibles list, the Europa League. It was a good year to be in the running. The competition had been restructured so that the non-quatlifying Champions League teams didn’t spill back into the knockout rounds. And his team, which had played so much of the season without its first choice back six, started to benefit from returning players. Ange rested them up for the fixtures that mattered, which weren’t the Premier League matches. The players absorbed defeat after humiliating defeat, but unlike the Spurs supporters, they never turned on Ange. Daniel Levy, to his credit, didn’t either. From as far out as the round of sixteen, the last trophy on the possibles list, did indeed look possible.

I remember waking up the morning of the first leg of the Round of Sixteen tie. Spurs nil, AZ Alkmaar 1. Who the hell were AZ Alkmaar? Ah no. Ange the punchline — I always win things in my second year. Ange the punching bag.

But then it was a revitalised Spurs in the second leg. A resolute Spurs at home and away against Eintracht Frankfurt, the best opponent Ange faced in the knock out stages. An accomplished Spurs, even up beyond the Arctic Circle against FK Bodø/Glimt. And a determined courageous Spurs in Bilbao on Wednesday, defending as Ange said he wouldn’t, winning. Having played so much of the season without defenders, Ange played the final without his attacking midfield. James Madisson has some claims to being Spurs’ best player, Dejan Kulusevski is a contender for that honour too, and 19 year old Lucas Bergvall will end up being better than both of them. Throw in the fact that Son Heung-min was underdone, and there was some cause for pre game doubt.

Not from me, incidentally. Having made our doco about the Ange origin story under Ferenc Puskas (Ange & The Boss, it’s still on at Nova!), having cut what we call our ‘Ange glory montage’ that captures the back to back championships at South Melbourne (1997-8), Brisbane Roar (2010-11) the Asian Cup with the Socceroos (2015), Yokohama F. Marinos (2019) and Celtic (2022-23), having read Vince Rugari’s Angeball that tells the ridiculous story of how you go from being a 12 year old self appointed coach of a Melbourne primary school without a soccer team to the first Australian to coach in the Premier League — I never wavered. There are twenty seconds in ‘Ange & the Boss’ in which he walks across a changing room and says to the Marinos players, ‘Today is for our supporters. Next week is for us. We fix them up them up too’. The squad erupts as he leaves the room, and it’s the most exhilarating twenty seconds in the film. He’s now won nine out of ten championship deciders. He’s either extrordinarily lucky of extrordinarily good.

During our Australian film release tour, I asked Paul Trimboli, one of Ange’s best mates and a long term assistant about the ‘I always win things in my second year’ comment. ‘I reckon it was calculated,’ Trimmers said. 'He would have thought about it, and then said it, becasue if you’re a player and you hear him saying something like that publicly, you kind of sit up and go, shit, he actually thinks we’re going to win something! He believes it Maybe I should believe it. That’s the sort of thing Ange does.’

So maybe ignore everything I wrote above about it being a flash of anger, or a rush of blood. However the comment came to be, now that the silverware has come to be, it’s utterly brilliant. It will enter folklore, be etched on a professional tombstone that will be as glittering and as glorious as any in the history of Australian coaching. How thrilled we are to be on the outskirts of Ange’s story. What a man he is.

The video above was edited by my friends at the Football Untold Podcast (I was on episode 11, Kangaroo Goulash, talking about Ange & The Boss). It’s an instagram edit to Frank Sinatra’s My Way, which is a song that my dad has told me he never wants to hear again, because it’s a chest thumping ego trip of song, that puts self above community. Dad is so passionate about this that he’s threatened to haunt us if we ever play it at his funeral.

But NOBODY is a bigger fan of Ange than Dad. We made him an Ange T-shirt for his birthday. He’s adopted Tottenham, like so many Australians who were celebrating on Thursday morning. We’re not Spurs fans. We’re Postecoglou People. We’re Ange Acolytes.

It’ll be interesting to see if Dad likes the edit. Ange did kinda do it his way.

I cried.

Here is co director Cam’s video in the aftermath of the win. It’s going very well on @angeandtheboss Instagram.