Soccer

He took Spurs to their first trophy in 17 years but was still punted. Now Ange Postecoglou’s ignominious exit from Forest has all but sealed his English Premier League fate. By Martin McKenzie-Murray.

The fall and fall of Ange Postecoglou

Ange Postecoglou during his final match as Nottingham Forest manager.

Credit: Shaun Botterill / Getty Images

I don’t mind admitting it: I got carried away. When Ange Postecoglou was made manager of Tottenham Hotspur in 2023, he became the first Australian boss of an English Premier League side. There was a parochial pride here, but much else besides. A defensiveness, perhaps, as the relative obscurity of Big Ange was cited by English sceptics. A swashbuckling Aussie had stormed the citadel of the world’s greatest league, and done so amid the slings and arrows of outrageous Pommy condescension.

For many fans and pundits, there seemed something improper about an Australian occupying such a position. For some, he was an interloper, a pretender, a fraud. A man of unusual arrogance and reckless naivety. A man promoted well beyond his ability. His CV – Australia, Japan, Scotland – was mocked as unserious. And so the temporary humbling of his critics, after his first 10 games in charge of Spurs, sweetened the whole thing: eight wins, two draws and three consecutive manager of the month awards.

Postecoglou’s media conferences in those days became as beloved by English journos as his team’s maniacal press and adventurously high lines. Relaxed and jocular, there was none of the abrasive defensiveness that would later come to define his relationship with the media. Instead, he riffed philosophically, spoke plainly and cracked wise. This Postecoglou was calm, warm, approachable – and celebrated for more than his results. The Australian fan, otherwise sensitive to the patronising sneers that first greeted Postecoglou, could defiantly raise their middle finger.

In that first season, Spurs finished fifth in the league – a very good result considering it was their first campaign largely without Harry Kane, one of their greatest strikers, who had left for Bayern Munich after almost 12 years at the London club.

Things would sour.

I confess to admiring individuals who are as independent as cats; wilful folk, passionately devoted and enlivened by romance as much as ambition. Postecoglou is such an individual and, for as long as he was winning, it was easy to celebrate these virtues – uncomplicated, as they were then, by their uglier cousins: tactical inflexibility and self-pity.

Some comparisons have been made with the great English manager Brian Clough, who managed Nottingham Forest when it became the only English club to be consecutively crowned champions of Europe. Beyond the success, Clough is remembered for the sharpness of his tongue – he left behind a treasure of wit, aphorisms and insults. As clever as his tongue was, though, it was also impulsive and cruel – traits worsened by his increasingly heavy drinking.

But goddamn if Clough wasn’t captivating. His arrogance was flamboyant and his self-regard could often be forgiven for its magnetism and, ultimately, its justification in results. Temperamentally, Postecoglou is a very different person. But the two share a fanatical belief in attractive football – that dour pragmatism is a kind of soul death – as they share a fanatical belief in their own ability to impose their vision upon their squad.

So it was easy to barrack for Postecoglou – an outsider and reckless idealist possessed of unwavering self-belief. The line between being publicly celebrated and maligned is fine, however, and whether one is seen as brilliant or destructively wilful depends upon the results.

Postecoglou’s second season with Spurs was a disaster – or a triumph. Most incline towards the former. Postecoglou argues the latter. From fifth in the league, Spurs fell to 17th – just outside relegation and their lowest finish in their Premier League history.

The relaxed media conferences were gone, replaced with hostile exchanges and mutual condescension. My view about these conferences changes. It could be argued that Postecoglou’s defensiveness was provoked by the media’s inanity and repetitive scepticism, and that we should be grateful to him for revealing his prickly humanity rather than obscuring it with rote lines. Equally, I can see a bitter and increasingly humourless man who became obsessed by his perceived persecution.

That the season might be thought a triumph rests with their Europa League success, Spurs’ first trophy in 17 years. This can be sliced several ways. Postecoglou was asked to deliver a trophy and he did – with a squad notoriously decimated by injury. On the other hand, the Europa League is a sickly brother to the pre-eminent European competition – the Champions League – and Spurs won the former by narrowly beating a mediocre Manchester United, the only club in the competition with more wealth.

Postecoglou assumed he had done enough to satisfy his employers and was badly stung when he was sacked only a fortnight after lifting the trophy. Determining that trophy’s significance, and whether it was sufficient success to keep Postecoglou on, has been debated without resolution in North London’s pubs ever since.

In the 2024-25 season, it’s true that Spurs were blighted by a series of injuries so bad it resembled a curse. Postecoglou never stopped reminding the media of this, but I thought it disingenuous to isolate this misfortune as purely an example of bad luck. As I wrote at the beginning of the year: “Postecoglou is radically inflexible, and to be stubbornly committed to a flamboyant and demanding style when half your squad is out is to court disaster. If your tactical vision hinges on consistent health, and misfortune never darkening your club, then you are responsible when the hinge falls off.”

Last month, Ange Postecoglou was employed as manager of Nottingham Forest – Brian Clough’s old club. It was surprising, to say the least. Forest had eclipsed all expectations in the previous season by finishing seventh in the Premier League and only a game behind qualification for the Champions League. They did so under the watch of the popular Nuno Espírito Santo and with a style contrary to Postecoglou’s: they played deep, successfully absorbed pressure, and scored from counterattacks. They were cautious, defensive and didn’t fret about possession.

Now, a fanatical romantic – or kamikaze pilot, depending on who you speak to – was appointed to take charge of this modest squad and convert them to devotees of Angeball. It went badly, as seemed inevitable. With the team winless in eight games and defensively hapless, Postecoglou was sacked last weekend after only 39 days – the shortest ever spell for a permanent Premier League manager.

Postecoglou had been hired by Forest’s owner, the Greek shipping and media magnate Evangelos Marinakis. A billionaire several times over, Marinakis commercially governs good swathes of the world’s oceans as well as owning two of Greece’s most popular newspapers, a TV station and the country’s most famous football club to boot.

It requires very little effort to imagine Marinakis as a vicious Roman emperor, sending those who’ve displeased him to creatively diabolical deaths. Notorious for his capricious temper and history of scorched relationships, there follows him a cloud of sour irritation and vulgar hauteur. This is one Master of the Universe who rarely seems like he’s having any fun.

Last Saturday, as Forest conceded a second goal at home against Chelsea – they would ultimately lose 3-0 – Marinakis departed his throne in disgust. That the club owner’s seat at the City Ground remained conspicuously empty for the remainder of the match was a grim sign for Postecoglou. His end came seventeen minutes after the final whistle.

It was an unflattering scoreline, but Forest’s first half was genuinely impressive and I’m baffled by how they failed to score. But no salvation was to be found there, and few fans mourned the manager’s dismissal.

Ange Postecoglou’s final press conference as Forest manager, held in the days before the Chelsea match, continued my theme of duality. There was much to admire and to wince at.

Postecoglou media events have often become passive-aggressive psychodramas – repetitive in their questions as well as their subject’s bitter arbitration of grievance. For the hundredth time, Postecoglou was asked if he was under pressure. What followed was a five-minute response. He suggested there was an unjust attention to his failures, when there’s plenty to commend. He said his first 10 games at Spurs seemed to have been forgotten now – or dismissed as an “anomaly” – but now the first 10 games at Forest were “very important, apparently”.

He said that in his first season, Spurs finished fifth and made Europe; in his second season they won a trophy. And yet – and this is what he could not abide – the prevailing story about him was failure. “I guess from my perspective, I just don’t fit. Not here [at Forest]. Just in general. If you look at it through the prism of: I’m a failed manager who is lucky to get this job – I know you’re smirking at me and that’s what’s being said and I can find the print where that’s being said.”

I found all of this fascinating. Bitter, self-pitying – but also admirably candid. He spoke with unfaltering calmness. Here was a man effectively detailing what he saw as the assassination of his reputation – a victim of sport’s passions and its convenient marshalling of evidence – but he did so without strain, tears or raising his voice. This was a gentle act of self-martyrdom.

Ange Postecoglou should never have taken this job. He should have waited patiently for a more appropriate offer. The sad fact now is that he is unlikely to manage in the Premier League for some time. But recovery is always possible and I hope he can find redemptive glory in Europe somewhere. I wouldn’t bet against it.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on October 25, 2025 as "Ange’s ashes".

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