When reflecting on Ange Postecoglou’s all-too-brief tenure as coach of Melbourne Victory, it’s best to start by remembering the hole the club was in prior to his arrival.
With a star-studded XI on paper, Melbourne began the 2011/12 season as title favourites.
A team of champions doesn’t mean a champion team, however, and under first Mehmet Durakovic and later Jim Magilton, the self-styled ‘biggest club in Australia’ proved that adage to be true.
The team produced so much less than the sum of their parts (Archie Thompson, Harry Kewell, Carlos Hernandez and Marco Rojas included), finishing eighth with just six wins from 27 games (or three from 24 if you don’t count matches against Wellington).
Postecoglou’s Brisbane Roar, a club Melbourne once routinely beat, won the championship for a second straight year.
Highly-fancied Victory spent the season shooting blanks, throwing away leads and struggling to string four passes together.
By season’s end, morale was at an all-time low.
In a big money coup, the board landed Postecoglou to take charge of the rebuild. It didn’t take long for him demonstrate the ruthless streak he brought to the Roar.
Club great Danny Allsopp, ostensibly ‘retiring’, departed the scene after Round 2. Two goalkeepers were tried and quickly dropped, with a third (Nathan Coe) used between the sticks inside four weeks.
Time wasn’t wasted looking for the best mix.
Incredibly, of the 13 players used in the final BA (Before-Ange) match in March 2012, only three remain at the club today.
Those demanding a Socceroos overhaul should be salivating at that fact.
The revolution was initially built on shaky ground. It took eight weeks for a clean sheet to be registered (and only five were kept over the entire season), with 16 goals leaked in those opening two months.
The team managed to score 14 goals in that run, however, and after the depressing and frustrating experience of 2011/12, going to the football was suddenly exciting again.
Melbourne won four matches 3-2 but conceded four in Adelaide, five in Brisbane and six in Gosford. Newcastle was demolished 5-0.
33 players were utilised, many of them fresh-faces from the youth team. It was a breathless, helter-skelter, high-risk-high-reward rejuvenation of a football club in such short time.
We got terrific value for money.
The (Greek) tragedy of his departure is in how short his reign was, and of business which remains unfinished.
Postecoglou took the club from eighth to third in his first season, and indications are he would have done even better this time around.
Recruitment was sound, the squad’s myriad youngsters completed another pre-season and the display against English pacesetter Liverpool had supporters, the press and even Brendan Rodgers humming.
Postecoglou, with a brilliant eye for talent sure to serve the Socceroos well, assembled a seriously vibrant squad, rich with the potential of succeeding not just in Australia, but Asia too – only for the club to lose him before the benefits could really be enjoyed.
Postecoglou is different to any manager the club has had.
His confidence in his convictions shows whenever he fronts a camera, where he is at-ease and engaging.
His aura is indisputable – he knows how to get the best out of players, regardless of age, and you feel like his sides are never out of games.
See how Victory came back from the brink against Perth in the finals, or salvaged a draw despite trailing 2-0 late in Adelaide a fortnight ago.
The past 18 months have been a whirlwind, with so much happening in such a short time. In short – and it was short, his stint at the club lasting a meagre 32 competitive games – he turned Melbourne Victory right around.
More than two-thirds of the squad was overhauled. The playing style was revolutionised. Mark Milligan became club captain. In a single year, the club’s youth team went from bottom place to champions. By the end of his tenure, even the defence started coming good.
Some of my best memories as a fan were provided, such as the come-from-behind 2-3 triumph in Sydney and Archie Thompson’s stoppage-time winner in last year’s Christmas derby.
There was also the 0-2 win against the Wanderers in Parramatta – a tough place to win at the best of times, even more so when you play with ten men for 74 minutes, as Victory did on that occasion.
Best of all, Postecoglou got Melbourne Victory playing attractively again.
Heart’s main, somewhat flaky point of difference – a claim of playing some kind of Barcelona-of-the-southern-hemisphere, cultured football rather than Scottish-influenced, long ball fare – has been made a mockery of.
For us fans, it’s a minor tragedy the perilous state of the national team robbed Victory of its coach.
With a World Cup looming, the Australia job was understandably too good to refuse.
In all likelihood, Kevin Muscat will take the baton and attempt to finish what he and Postecoglou began 18 months ago.
As an apprentice, he couldn’t have asked for a better master.
Ange Postecoglou’s record at Melbourne Victory
Games 32, wins 15, draws 7, losses 10. Goals for 53, goals against 49.
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