Tottenham Hotspur has reached a verbal agreement to appoint Ange Postecoglou as the club’s new manager. The appointment will be officially confirmed once compensation terms have been finalized with Celtic.
Tottenham and Postecoglou have reportedly settled on a two-year deal with an option to extend for a further season. The Australian manager currently has a one-year rolling contract with Celtic, meaning he is free to look for other options but Spurs will need to compensate Celtic for the move.
Once confirmed, Postecoglou will be leaving Celtic after two hugely successful seasons with the Scottish club.
Postecoglou joined Celtic after three and a half seasons with the Yokohama F. Marinos in the Japanese J League. Prior to that, he coached the Australian national team for four years, winning the 2015 Asian Cup. He earlier coached the Australian U-20 team for six years, and spent most of the rest of his coaching career in Australia’s A-League, except for nine months in Greece.
That experience in Japan, where he won the 2019 J League title, proved hugely influential in Scotland. Postecoglou used his knowledge of Asia-Pacific talent to great effect with Celtic, stacking the squad with players from well outside the league’s normal reach.
By the end of the 2022-23 season, Celtic had seven players in the first team from the Asia-Pacific region — Kyogo Furuhashi, Yuki Kobayashi, Daizen Maeda, Reo Hatate, and Tomoki Iwati from Japan, Oh Hyeon-gyu from Korea and Aaron Mooy from Australia — as well as Japanese midfielder Yosuke Ideguchi currently out on loan.
All eight of those players joined Celtic during Postecoglou’s two years in charge.
Postecoglou takes over a Tottenham side that finished eighth in the Premier League this season, meaning they will miss out on all European football in the next campaign for the first time since 2009-10.
He is the fourth permanent manager to be appointed to lead the club since Mauricio Pochettino was fired in 2019, after Jose Mourinho, Nuno Espirito Santo, and Antonio Conte. The Spurs have been without a permanent manager since Conte left in March.
Postecoglou’s rapid attacking style proved very successful for Celtic, where he is one of only five managers to secure a domestic clean sweep with the club.
Although that success may seem less impressive considering it came with such a prominent club, Celtic had just finished 25 points behind Rangers when Postecoglou took the helm two years ago.
Although Postecoglou may not be able to rely quite so heavily on importing unknown upon or underestimated international talent in a Premier League set, his expected appointment has received a very positive response from former players, pundits, and managers, if not from Tottenham fans themselves.
“If I was looking for somebody, if I was the chairman of Tottenham, he would be right at the top of my list,” former Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp told BBC Scotland last week.
Former Liverpool and England star Michael Owen shared a similar sentiment on Twitter: “If @SpursOfficial secure Postecoglou it will be the first time they’ve secured a manager that fits their famed style of play in years. I think he’s top class and it’ll be a bitter blow for @CelticFC to lose him.”
Former Tottenham defender Ramon Vega shared similar thoughts on Twitter, although the response from Tottenham supporters remains fairly mixed. Fans are skeptical in part because of his lack of experience in a top European league and because of his nationality — when appointed, Postecoglou will be the first Australian manager in the Premier League.
Those same concerns were voiced when Postecoglou first joined Celtic as well — with the man himself admitting that he was seen as a bit of a “joke” initially — but the results quickly silenced the skeptics. The Australian manager leaves Scotland as a hugely popular figure with Celtic fans, having won five of a possible six trophies and built a squad that looks likely to continue that success for at least the next few years.
BY JIM BULLEY [jim.bulley@joongang.co.kr]
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