It’s been a season and half into the job, and yet performances under Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou remain consistently inconsistent.
As is always the case, there are things out of Postecoglou’s control, and then there are some things very much within his mandate, but as most know by now the man has a very particular sense of rigidity about his football ideals from which he simply refuses to budge.
Now, Postecoglou is not the first coach to have affinity for one and only one type of play, and he will most certainly not be the last, but his particular brand of dogma makes it very difficult for him to succeed at Tottenham in the long run. After all, the man has told us himself that he simply will not change.
Does it really have to be this way, though? Are idealism and adaptability two mutually exclusive concepts unable to exist in tandem?
Simply put, no. Here, we thought we’d take the example of a Premier League boss who is known for a very particular brand of football and yet managed to succeed in the long term during his time in England.
A matter of identity
Even after him leaving Liverpool after a nine-year period, the phrase that comes to mind when one thinks of Jürgen Klopp is “heavy-metal football”. Duly, the man over the course of his career has become famous for funnelling the emotions of the people backing his sides into a type football that is breath-taking—sometimes literally.
But to say that Klopp’s football in his first season at Liverpool is congruent to that of his final campaign would simply be incorrect. Arriving mid-season in the 2015/16 season after the dismissal of Brendan Rodgers, the two-time German Bundesliga winner had at his hands a team not entirely of a make-up of his liking—here was in front of him the gargantuan task of waking the Merseyside beast.
As we know now, he did manage just that. But things did not look to go that way in the beginning. While he had managed to inculcate his gegenpressing fundamentals within a few weeks of his arrival at Anfield, the results were far from consistent.
And yet, counter-pressing was one way he could coach his team into exerting influence on the pitch without possession of the ball, and duly in his first half-season the Reds fluctuated between having impressive performances and leaving a bit to be desired.
The choice of growth
Teething problems are inevitable. Sometimes things click immediately, and sometimes it takes time. Let’s not forget that, coming into the 2018/19 season Klopp and Liverpool were still being regarded as an exciting team that incapable of going all the way. Up until this point they had lost finals in both the Europa League and the Champions League, and yet that’s a monkey they managed to get off their back.
This begs the question: how?
Over time, as Liverpool established themselves under Klopp as a side who’d make the opposition hate being in possession, teams accordingly started adapting. In time they began inviting Liverpool to keep the ball for themselves, and now the Merseyside outfit had another challenge at their hands.
At the end of the 2016/17 season, Liverpool finished fourth in the league. Next season, despite making the Champions League final, they again finished fourth. But few believed that they had made little progress in this period. Gradual additions to the team allowed Liverpool to develop a style of play that could help them dominate not only with their pressing but also when they had the ball.
By 2018/19, having in place in particular Virgil van Dijk at centre-back, Alisson Becker in goal, Fabinho as the designated number six, and Andy Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold as fullbacks, Klopp had established a lopsided 4-3-3 setup which in possession could exert control and create threatening game states both centrally and out wide, while retaining the off-ball fundamentals that had been in place since Day One.
Over the next two seasons, Liverpool conquered Europe and England. With the right mix of players and tactics, the Reds were back on their perch. All because, in his tactical pursuit, Klopp chose to adapt. Chose to look at the situation at hand, acknowledged the need for improvement, and built upon the fundamentals he never walked away from.
Again, as the seasons went by and oppositions began adapting their approach, the Reds began changing again. Emphasis was given to bringing players that could help dictate the tempo at will. Patterns of play among key personnel that had been playing together for ages were allowed to evolve organically, and challenges like the injuries that hit Liverpool particularly in 2020/21 were dealt with by ad-hoc solutions that were the need of the hour, with the fundamentals still in tact.
The Liverpool Klopp left behind at the end of last season was one quite distant from the sole-gegenpressing side that he had established in 2015/16. This new group was more comfortable on the ball, keen on opening up spaces behind the opposition by drawing their players in with deep build-ups, which presented as ideal a scenario as could have been presented for the new coach, Arne Slot, to build upon with his own set of fundamentals.
Conclusion
“Change is the only constant” is a commonplace adage. Even if you refuse to change, your surroundings won’t, which leaves you with a choice—adapt, or perish.
In a footballing context, no one has the liberty to stay in one place and hope things will be okay in the long term. Not even Pep Guardiola at Man City, a marriage that brings together one of the brightest, most innovative tactical minds of all time and one of the most well-run clubs in the world, have the luxury to sit upon their laurels.
Every season, teams come up with new, inventive ways to tackle the tactical challenges owing to the mountainous amount of ubiquitous data and footage available for analysis. Every season, teams have to keep an eye out for oppositions that may end up figuring their game out. Every season, injuries hit a side in ways they cannot prepare for. This is an infinitely complex ecosystem that will always throw challenges not even the savviest of minds will be prepared for.
Ange Postecoglou, for reasons not known to us, tends to believe that he needs to stick to his ideals in a way that eliminates almost any room for growth, that he should be able to succeed with the same ideas that have brought him thus far even if the challenge becomes tougher and the oppositions become more resourceful. We can take the Klopp example and say that you can, in fact, prefer a style of play and adapt to the challenge, but in reality we have seen more than enough from Postecoglou to know that this is something he simply refuses to do and will not do.
People following football long enough know how this dance ends, and we can even expect Postecoglou to prefer getting the sack while playing his football instead of prolonging his stay in North London by trying to adapt. While Postecoglou will be a happy man when gets the sack, Tottenham need to tow the line between the reality of business and romance and make sure they adapt to the requirements they have at hand.
