After Saturday’s 2-0 win over Manchester United, Tottenham’s new head coach Ange Postecoglou stood in the centre circle and looked around the stadium, taking everything in.
“You want to feel that moment, because I love what football does to people, particularly in those moments,” he later explained. “So, you kind of take a moment to think about the 60,000 here or the ones who were watching at home, because they will be smiling for the rest of the week. I love that it does that, the game.
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“For me, that moment is just about appreciating that I’m pretty blessed to be doing what I am doing, being in the middle of a stadium leading a fantastic football club.
“And then you start to think about next week, mate.”
It was a statement that says so much about Postecoglou, and his grasp of oratory and rhetoric.
The ability to see beyond himself and have the perspective and emotional intelligence to understand what football is capable of doing. To empathise with the crowd and help forge a connection with them because they feel that he’s “one of us”. This is something that Jurgen Klopp has mastered up at Liverpool.
And then the disarming bathos (a sudden switch from a serious topic to a far less weighty one, creating the, often humorous, effect of anticlimax) of, “And then you start to think about next week, mate”. The mundanity contrasting with the philosophising of the previous few sentences.
Postecoglou was similarly philosophical the previous afternoon when he said: “I listened to a podcast and I thought it was a great description of what football is about. It is not about being happy, because you actually suffer a game of football until that joyous moment when the ball goes in the net or you win the game. That is a nice way of (describing) what I am trying to do. I want to bring them joy but they need to understand there will be some suffering within that.”
We’re taking it one game at a time, this was not.
Especially as, in the next exchange, Postecoglou moved onto the merits of Peter Andre’s pop career when trying to remember which Australian musician had been the guest on the podcast he was referring to. “It was a little bit deeper than that,” he said. “Nothing against Peter Andre, obviously, because he is a fantastic talent, but it escapes me at the moment.”
It was a throwaway line, but one that lightened the mood, and this is something Postecoglou does very effectively in his press conferences. He is naturally funny, and his deadpan delivery adds to the effect.
Postecoglou said four years ago, while working in Japan and reflecting on the challenges of not being a native speaker, that language “is probably my best and (most) effective weapon.”
Others might point to his tactical innovations or successes elsewhere, but Postecoglou’s communication skills were a big reason why Spurs appointed him. After Jose Mourinho, Nuno Espirito Santo and Antonio Conte, they were desperate for someone to unite the fanbase and give everyone at the club something to believe in.
Postecoglou is doing just that a few months in, but what it is that makes him such a persuasive orator?
Back in 2009, it was Postecoglou’s communication skills that in part rescued him from the footballing wilderness.
Having left his job managing Australia under-20s and after a brief stint managing in the Greek third division, he was running coaching clinics and helping out a friend by briefly managing Melbourne semi-pro side Whittlesea Zebras. He was also given a role as a studio analyst for Fox Sports TV in his homeland. He was a natural, and it raised his profile to the extent that A-League side Brisbane Roar took a chance on him.
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“He reinvented himself at Fox Sports,” says David Weiner, director of content for the A-Leagues, who covered Postecoglou closely while at Fox Football and Optus Sport. “That gave him a lifeline and shaped him as a manager because he gets both sides of it (the manager’s and the media’s). He was a brilliant analyst and a captivating talker.”
Postecoglou was a huge success in Brisbane — winning back-to-back A-League titles while playing a thrilling brand of football — and his players there can still remember some of the team talks he gave a decade on.
Foreshadowing what he said on Saturday about taking the time to appreciate the moment, Matt McKay, a midfielder who played under Postecoglou for club and country, recalls something similar after they had won the A-League together with Brisbane in 2011.
McKay said, “He sat us down in the centre circle after we’d won the title and said, ‘Look around. Look at the guys you have with you, and how special this is. Cherish the moment and all the hard work you’ve done because you’ll never have it with this same group again.’
“His speeches were amazing — with Australia as well. And it’s hard to keep them inspiring and motivational when it’s such a long season and there are lots of games. But he managed to do that, and after hearing them you want to run through a brick wall for him.”
Many of you by now will probably have seen the video of Postecoglou speaking to his Australia players ahead of their opening match against Germany in the 2017 Confederations Cup in Russia (which they had qualified for by winning the Asian Cup two years earlier).
Ahead of what was a landmark match for Australian football (it ended in a 3-2 defeat to the then-world champions), Postecoglou encourages his players to think of the one person who went above and beyond for them and allowed them to make it as a professional footballer. He cites his father as being that person for him. It’s an extremely compelling speech, and one cited by many of his former players as one that they have never forgotten.
The defender Ryan McGowan, currently with Scottish Premiership side St Johnstone, later joked on Twitter: “What a team talk this was — (he did) it just before lunch, so I two-footed the waiter as we walked out the meeting.”
Ben Coonan was the in-house videographer for the Australia team while Postecoglou was the manager, and was tasked with coming up with clips to go alongside his speeches, including this one (you can see the emotive clips he selected in the video above).
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“I filmed as many of his speeches as I could, and what’s amazing is that although the version you saw has been edited and trimmed, even in the full version I could count on one hand the pauses or ‘umms’ or ‘errs’ where he doesn’t quite nail it.
“He must practise them. Because he’s so on point. He knows how to raise his voice and at times it’s almost theatrical, he’s like an actor in the way he delivers them — like Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday. He sees them as a really valuable tool in getting the best out of people. Finding these universal but also very specific themes — like that family one, everyone can relate to that. But when he delivers them, he makes it seem like he’s just talking to you.
“He’s very well read — always in an airport lounge, he’d be reading. He’s forever reading, absorbing information from different people. You always thought, ‘How can he find another angle?’. And then he would.”
Postecoglou admits that: “I like to tell stories, to say why we’re doing things. I love the detail behind it.”
He may have exceptional delivery, but part of what makes Postecoglou so effective is his authenticity. It’s this that gets his players to really believe in him.
Authenticity is one of the keys to a good speech, says Michael Ronayne, director of the Art of Training and Public Speaking course and an oratory expert.
“I get a bit concerned when people say, ‘I want to improve my public speaking, so I’ve joined a drama club’,” says Ronayne, who is also — and this is genuinely a thing — a four-time UK national public-speaking champion. “I think, ‘Oh Christ, that’s the last thing you want to do.’ You want to be yourself. Otherwise, people won’t listen so effectively or with such an open mind.”
Watching that Postecoglou speech back, Ronayne provides some expert oratorical analysis.
“What makes him a great communicator is that he knows who he’s talking to,” says Ronayne. “So he’s always speaking with half of his mind thinking about who’s the audience.
“What he’s playing on here is a very simple visualisation — ‘I’d like you to picture this’ is basically what he’s saying to them. It’s a positive visualisation, and like any effective presentation, it’s an emotional appeal. You have to emotionally engage them in the situation. Speaking about logic or facts is not going to work.
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“He paints a picture of what success will look like and takes them on his extended visualisation. And a clever rhetorical technique he uses is he’s actually joining the dots for the audience. Giving examples of who this person could be — ‘It could be your mum or your brother,’ et cetera.”
After urging his players to think of the one person who has helped them, Postecoglou gives them an example by citing his own father. And again he uses humour to put people at ease.
When I walk out my old man’s next to me.
He’s a hard man, my old man, still is today, but he’s the one that kept saying to me, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing.
You’re going to love this game and you’re going to make it to the very top.’
Hard man, though — when we won the Asian Cup I went to his place, showed him my medal. He said, ‘Well done, son, but if you’d made a substitution a little bit earlier and you stopped this playing-out-from-the-back shit it wouldn’t have gone into extra time and you’d be fine.’
Still a hard man. Can’t please him. And that’s who walks out with me tonight.
“The reason those excerpts about his dad are effective is because the first question an audience asks is, ‘How does this relate to me?’,” says Ronayne. “The second question from an audience is, ‘Why am I listening to you?’.
“When he talks about him and his dad, I’m thinking about my person. He’s very good at constantly making the connection between his experience and my emotion.
“Making yourself vulnerable is very good for a speaker but it only works if people don’t think you’re a bit of an asshole. He has built-in credibility because everyone there already thinks he’s tough.
“But Arsene Wenger or Unai Emery, for example, couldn’t deliver this speech. If Emery was delivering this speech he’d be saying, ‘I know what I’m talking about tactically, listen to me.’ Wenger would be effectively saying, ‘I’m smarter than you, listen to me. I’ve done the analysis’ et cetera.
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“What Postecoglou does here is play on the idea that he’s a straight-talking bloke who people can relate to. And that’s often the most effective communication — it’s what Joe Biden did in the speech he borrowed bits of from (the former Labour leader) Neil Kinnock. ‘Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?,’ Kinnock asked.
“And by referring to his father, this isn’t just Ange saying ‘think about these people’. This is his father’s wisdom as well. And we all admire and love fathers.”
Postecoglou’s speeches resonate to this day with his former Australia players, who marvel at his emotional intelligence.
“His team talks were amazing. I actually wrote some down, because I was so impressed with them, and kept them in my phone,” says James Holland, a midfielder for the national team under Postecoglou. “The way he delivered them was so powerful. And we knew his father was a massive presence and influence in that regard. He was a brilliant storyteller and very good at using real-life situations that trigger your emotions.”
Another of his former Australia players, Adam Taggart, a striker at A-League side Perth Glory and formerly of Fulham and Dundee United, agrees: “His messaging and the points he gets across are so powerful and really resonate with all the players about their own situation. He reads what’s going on around the place and understands people as individuals. And these talks have you so motivated to go into a session.
“Especially in Australian football, the message was always, ‘We’re underdogs — we’re here to prove a point.’ He puts the focus on where we’ve all come from, which is all different backgrounds and nationalities, and you’ve had to go against the grain to become a professional footballer in Australia. So I think those kinds of messages really kept us together as a group and made us all want to prove a point.
“It sounds simple talking about it, but the way he delivers it is on another level.”
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Under Postecoglou, Australia won their first and only major trophy (that 2015 Asian Cup) and held their own in a very difficult World Cup group in Brazil a year earlier, leading 2-1 against eventual semi-finalists the Netherlands before losing 3-2.
That Confederations Cup speech finishes with the bathos we saw again in Saturday’s press conference.
First the inspiring words and emotional crescendo of: “You wouldn’t be sitting here today unless there was a person in your life who just gave you the most enormous love and belief. That (made you think), ‘You know what, I don’t give a fuck what happens to me or what people say about me or what challenges I have, I’m gonna fucking make it’.”
Then a pause and the amusingly mundane: “Alright, enjoy your lunch.”
Coonan remembers other examples of Postecoglou’s inspiring speeches. There was one when Australia began their qualification campaign for the 2018 World Cup, when the manager tasked him with putting together a video montage of great sporting moments from the country’s history. Postecoglou used the footage to help remind the players of the gleeful reaction to these successes.
Again, this is all about positive visualisations.
Coonan adds that Postecoglou’s communication skills were more effective because he wasn’t someone who typically spoke a great deal: “I actually found him the best communicator I ever had because his words carry so much gravitas, and when he does speak to you, you’re so bolted into him and focused and keen to listen to what he’s saying and impress him that you don’t let the moment slip.”
Postecoglou himself is aware that he is not great at small talk, and has said before that he rarely has individual conversations with any of his players that last longer than a minute. It was interesting talking to him in Perth while Spurs were on a pre-season tour there earlier this summer and hearing him say that he felt more comfortable talking to a large group of people (as he had just been doing for almost an hour at a big event) than when engaging in small talk with just one or two.
Ante Milicic was Postecoglou’s assistant manager with Australia, and still marvels at the way his old boss used to communicate. Milicic puts much of it down to Postecoglou’s intelligence, saying, “He could quite easily be the CEO of a big corporate organisation.
“When it comes to his team talks and communication, he’s so intelligent, so smart. And his message and vision of how the game should be played are very compelling. He’ll think of something no one would have thought about. The problem is he always did it before lunch, and (it meant) the players wanted to go and play then!
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“He finds the little trigger in each individual and the team, and finds a way to get through to them. He’d finish it and you’d think, ‘Where did he get that from?’. It’s like he always seems to know what’s going to happen.”
Mourinho is another great communicator, with his former players saying it was like he could see into the future.
With Postecoglou, one example in particular stands out for Milicic — a tribute to Tim Cahill ahead of their third and final game of that 2017 Confederations Cup game against Chile, when the midfielder was about to pick up his 100th cap: “He mentioned all the obstacles Tim had overcome. He spoke about what it meant to Tim and the players. He got photos and interviews and videos to show to Tim. It was amazing. The tone of his voice, the pauses, the way he looks you in his eye.”
Australia played very well against Alexis Sanchez and company that day in Moscow, but were unable to hold onto their lead and ended up drawing 1-1 with the then-Copa America holders.
There were times also when Postecoglou was more direct in his communication — again relating to the point of knowing your audience and the situation.
Australian TV station Channel 10 has footage of some of his team talks that show him using a mixture of carrot and stick with his players.
Another interesting element of Postecoglou’s communication is that even when managing Yokohama F. Marinos in Japan, where he didn’t speak the language, he was still able to give extremely effective team talks — effective enough to win the J1 League in his second season. An interpreter there once said that the hairs on the back of his neck stood up when translating them.
Postecoglou explained at the time that he had to modify his communication because of him not speaking Japanese and also there being multiple translators for the players in the squad hailing from different countries. “I have four people talking at once. I’ve had to really sharpen my message because if I did a Churchillian speech, we’d be there for hours,” he said in 2020. “So I’ve had to make them really precise to get across my point.”
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Since leaving Japan to manage Scotland’s Celtic in the summer of 2021, Postecoglou has continued to try and keep his team talks as concise as possible, and at Spurs, his team meetings are generally a lot shorter than they were under Conte.
As well as with players and colleagues, the other main part of a manager’s communication is with the media (and through the media with supporters).
Sir Alex Ferguson and Mourinho were both excellent at shaping the narrative, often by being provocative.
One of Mourinho’s favourite rhetorical devices in press conferences is known as praeteritio, where you draw attention to something by saying you won’t talk about it. In his second week in charge at Tottenham, for instance, he insisted he didn’t want to talk about his previous record in the Champions League, while in the process reminding everyone of his credentials: “Do I want to win it a third time? Of course, I would love it. But I know the difficulties of it. And at this moment, it is not the moment to speak about it.”
Postecoglou is generally very good with the media, who appreciate his honesty and straight-talking. But towards the end of his time with Australia as he became more and more frustrated with the national football association’s in-fighting and external criticism, his relationship with the media became more strained.
Some reporters covering the Australia side found Postecoglou unnecessarily prickly at this time, as he became increasingly irritated with the doubts surrounding him and his team, who almost failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.
“At some point in time I’ll get replaced by ‘John the Pragmatist’ and you can all be happy and revel in it,” Postecoglou said after that draw with Chile at the 2017 Confederations Cup, where he had made six changes to his starting line-up with qualification for the knockout stage very unlikely.
As the above example shows, Postecoglou can be passive-aggressive when something irritates him or if he feels a question is wasting everyone’s time. Coonan, who at times doubled up as a media manager for the national team, recalls ahead of a game against Tajikistan a reporter asking Postecoglou if he feared for his job. Postecoglou responded by questioning whether, with the Asian Cup champions in town, that was really the most interesting question he could have asked.
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One thing that journalists who have covered him say is that Postecoglou has an exceptional memory and, as someone who knows the power of words, an ability to pick up on seemingly small things.
Hamish Carton, a Celtic podcaster and author of Never Stop: How Ange Postecoglou Brought the Fire Back to Celtic, says: “Watch what you’re saying at a press conference. I used the word ‘despondent’ after a Champions League game — Celtic had taken two points from five games and he did not like that. He remembers everything.”
Australian journalist Weiner has his own version of this: “It was Tokyo, 2017, and the World Cup qualification campaign was coming to an end. I’d written a piece a few months earlier where I’d said it had been a ‘gamble’ to phase out so many of the big-name, veteran players.
“Ange quoted the headline of my piece and said: ‘It wasn’t a gamble, mate. It was a plan.’
“It was a lesson for me, and a reminder that it’s the power of language, and rhetoric, which has helped mould the aura of Postecoglou.”
“In two years at Celtic, he never put a word wrong” — that was the view of one Celtic fan, and sums up the consensus view of his time in Glasgow.
Most journalists, Carton included, were similarly captivated by his words, like when, in February 2022, after Celtic had beaten arch-rivals Rangers 3-0 on the way to the title, he said. “I said to the players that we had 60,000 (fans) in tonight and I’m sure a lot of them walked in with some problems in their life. For this 95 minutes, we made them forget that and feel good and that’s something special.”
Again, it’s that ability to connect with the players and crowd, and appreciate that he is a small part of something much bigger.
As this example illustrates, Postecoglou understands the power of words. He knows that no manager will get anywhere without buy-in from the players and the supporters (this has especially been the case at Spurs over the last few years). And he knows that to get that you have to convince them you are on their side and want to take the team in the right direction.
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We’ve already seen this in his first couple of months at Tottenham.
At Celtic, one of his final speeches was to a different audience — not the media or his players, but the fans.
After making it two league titles in his two years, Postecoglou delivered a pitch-perfect speech on the pitch at Celtic Park.
Champions again.
We’re champions again because of this incredible group of players, brilliantly led by our skipper Callum McGregor.
Champions again because of this unbelievable group of people working behind the scenes — the staff.
Champions again because of you.
In the words of the immortal Tommy Burns, you are always there. Always.
Champions again because I am a lucky man.
But we’ve got one more to go, we never stop.
Our resident public speaking expert Ronayne breaks down what makes this so effective.
“He may have been a pain to many when studying at school, but most of these motivational speeches come from Shakespeare. This is channelling King Henry in Henry V — ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.’
“It’s us against them. And the reference to the (Rangers manager) Michael Beale quote about Postecoglou being a “lucky man” (because of the transfer funds Celtic had) is so effective because not only is it some asshole from outside, it’s a Rangers asshole.
“Mourinho and Sir Alex Ferguson often did this. ‘We are here, and they are over there, and there can’t be an us without identifying them.’ We see this in speeches all the time.
“Again, this is about knowing your audience. If this was being delivered to a general audience, there would be some who would think, ‘Well, you are a lucky man.’ But this speech is like a politician speaking to their base. And what someone says to their base is very different to what they would say in a news conference.
“Getting into the technical stuff, anaphora is the term when you repeat a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases. Pretty much this whole speech uses this technique. ‘Champions again… champions again… champions again.’ It’s a way of providing additional emphasis. I’ve no idea if Postecoglou has studied rhetoric, a lot of this is just common sense — things we know sound good.
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“It’s also anaphora mixed with climax. Climax are phrases like, ‘For you, your children, and your children’s children.’ They often go from small to bigger to biggest.
“Here, Postecoglou goes through all the different people and ends with, ‘Champions again, because of you (supporters).’
“The way he uses climax is based on the intention to make the fans feel good, and so he builds up to the crowd. If he was doing a speech on being a leader he would turn it on his head and finish it with the importance of the captain.
“Then there’s the bathos after all of the reasons for the victory with ‘…because I am a lucky man.’
“And evoking Tommy Burns (a legendary former player and ex-manager at the club, who died in 2008) is perfect — because whatever he says goes. It’s like invoking his dad in the Australia speech, you’re bringing in someone who has even more authority.
“It’s almost saying, ‘This isn’t me, this is Tommy Burns. And we all love Tommy Burns.’
“What he’s doing is choosing a source of credibility that we can all believe in. Though you do have to be very careful you’re picking the right person.”
You certainly do.
Liverpool fans still cringe remembering Roy Hodgson’s tone-setting gaffe in his unveiling press conference as manager in 2010. “Who were your managerial influences, Roy?”, he was asked at Anfield, sitting in front of a picture of the club’s legendary former manager Bill Shankly. His response: “Don Howe and Dave Sexton.”
Postecoglou, you imagine, would be smarter, and it’s easy to imagine him referring to someone like the great Bill Nicholson this season. In Perth last month, he mentioned Glenn Hoddle as a player he loved watching growing up, rather than someone like Kenny Dalglish, who he has cited before.
One final flourish in that Celtic speech is to finish with the words, “We never stop”. This became almost like the official slogan of Postecoglou’s time in Scotland, after he was captured saying it in one of his first-ever training sessions while wearing a microphone.
And it adds to the sense of a political leader speaking to their base. Of Barack Obama saying, “Yes we can!” in 2008.
Since joining Tottenham, Postecoglou has consistently struck just the right tone. As well as his communication skills, his authenticity also shone through during the recruitment process, and this has been something that has struck his new colleagues in north London.
With the media, he is very different from his recent predecessors. Mourinho was masterful in press conferences when it came to giving good quotes, but they weren’t always helpful for the club. Nuno had no interest in the media side of things, and made that clear during his brief reign. Conte could be insightful, but could also ramble, and at times he veered into implosion mode. It was the latter that ultimately triggered his departure late last season.
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Postecoglou has already had to deal with some tricky situations, the obsession over Harry Kane’s possible departure among them.
With that situation, he was good at making a joke out of the doom and gloom — commenting on just how little time it took for a question about the England captain to be asked.
And as those press conferences last week showed, he’s excellent at providing thoughtful analysis when given the platform.
“In the press conference, he’s much more restrained, much more humble,” Ronayne says after watching the start of Postecoglou’s pre-Manchester United press conference. “He says, ‘I really liked the way the players reacted…’
‘Like’ is very rational, ‘I love’ would be overemotional. It’s generally better to save the emotional stuff for the team talks et cetera. In most press conferences, he needs to sound like a thinking person. He’s very good at knowing what part to play in these different speeches. Not that he’s being inauthentic, but you have to be able to vary your messages and delivery depending on the audience.
“He looks at the journalists to show that he’s listening, and stops to think before delivering an answer. He makes the journalist feel like they matter and that they’re getting thoughtful answers.”
Ultimately, what will determine the success of Postecoglou’s time at Spurs will be the results his team get on the pitch, but the way he communicates could well have a big bearing on that. Already the players appreciate being given more responsibility (witness how he spoke to them in the meeting when he announced the new team captains) and the message that what has gone before doesn’t matter, that this is a fresh start, has resonated with them.
The media appreciate being given a proper window into his thinking at press conferences, while the fans love his positivity and genuine warmth towards the club.
GO DEEPER
This is Ange Postecoglou: The history, the track record, the philosophy
In his first answer at his unveiling, Postecoglou said: “I’m delighted to be here”. This was in stark contrast to the impression given by predecessor Conte.
Postecoglou makes it seem like he is just a small part of something bigger, and has said on a few occasions that it’s the fans who are the lifeblood of the club.
Alright, enjoy your lunch.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
