After signing a four-year contract with Spurs, the former Celtic manager, Ange Postecloglou, will make history by managing in the Premier League for the first time in the upcoming season. Although only three of his 27 years as a manager have been spent in Europe, his familiarity with the continent’s top club competition is greater than you might imagine.
Postecoglou claimed in 2020 that he won the Champions League with Southend United in the popular PC game Football Manager. He took over the club when they were in League Two in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald in 2020. He also confessed a secret fondness for the venerable Football Manager.
To stay the course, “I had to knock back some big clubs,” he said. “I bought young unproven players from Italy and South America after using journeymen and loaners to escape the lower levels. I didn’t play around with strategies; instead, I just wheeled and dealt.”
There will be a lot of smiling faces in north London if the 57-year-old can spark anything resembling the same type of spectacular growth at Tottenham. Let’s hope they treat him better than Southend did in the virtual world.
Postecoglou said, “I got fired six months after winning the Champions League, and I’d already turned down Juventus, Real Madrid, and the England national team before that.
Postecoglou has won 21 major awards, the most notable of which came in the previous ten years while he was coaching the Australian national team, Yokohama F. Marinos, and Celtic. However, his Champions League victory with Southend is also deserving of praise.
As Football Manager fans across the world will attest, the game is more of a frighteningly precise simulator than a game. Clubs all around the world utilise Sports Interactive’s huge player database as a scouting network, and the creators’ attention to detail, inventiveness, and precision are universally appreciated.