Tottenham Hotspur boss Ange Postecoglou reveals his least favourite part of his playing days, in an exclusive interview with FourFourTwo
(Image credit: James Cheadle)
Tottenham Hotspur boss Ange Postecoglou was once an Australian international left-back, but he’s revealed the one thing he disliked during his playing days: running.
After emigrating to Australia from Greece as a child, Postecoglou won two domestic league titles with South Melbourne as a player and represented Australia on four occasions.
He admits his style as a full-back may not have been entirely suited to the things he asks those players to do as a manager today, with his right-back and left-back often inverting into midfield.
Tottenham Hotspur manager Ange Postecoglou says he might have struggled playing his own style of football (Image credit: Getty Images)
But asked how Postecoglou the player would have found working for Postecoglou the manager, he thinks he would have found the training sessions stimulating.
“I would have enjoyed the training, because I hated running, mate!” he said during an exclusive interview for the current issue of FourFourTwo.
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“That’s not great for a footballer. I was a decent runner, I was in decent shape, but I could never understand why we used to run at training without the ball. We’d run for kilometres and kilometres, and I absolutely hated it.
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“So I’ve taken that into my coaching philosophy – everything we do in training has got to be around the way we want to play our football. So I would have enjoyed training, but it’s fair to say that as an inverted full-back, I’d have been lacking a fair bit of the qualities needed.”
Chris joined FourFourTwo in 2015 and has reported from more than 20 countries, in places as varied as Ivory Coast and the Arctic Circle. He's interviewed Pele, Zlatan and Santa Claus (it's a long story), as well as covering the World Cup, AFCON and the Clasico. He previously spent 10 years as a newspaper journalist, and completed the 92 in 2017.
