In just three years, he’s guided a freshly assembled motley crew of the unwanted, the unknown and the unproven to a premiership, two grand finals and now to the brink of Asian Champions League history.
He’s been chased for the national team job, knocked back offers from rival clubs and deflected interest from foreign suitors.
There’s no denying that someday, Tony Popovic will leave Western Sydney for greener pastures. And should the Wanderers edge past FC Seoul in Wednesday night’s semi-final second leg at Parramatta Stadium, that scenario might eventuate sooner rather than later.
When I corresponded with three Korean football fans two weeks ago, they were quick to praise Popovic’s role in Western Sydney’s rise through Asia.
“Popovic is fantastic with his strategy and tactics,” one of them lauded. “Not many in Korea know about Western Sydney as a team, but we know of Popovic’s reputation as a coach.”
It’s a reputation that continues to grow with each passing game. It would be no stretch of the truth to claim that the majority of the Australian footballing public is in agreement that Popovic is one of the country’s finest managers.
When you consider that Western Sydney is his first permanent head-coach position, it’s an endorsement that is all the more impressive.
And the fact that he was being rigorously considered to take charge of the Socceroos at the World Cup in Brazil, after only three years of coaching, speaks for itself.
But not everyone is waving the Popovic banner.
FC Seoul coach Choi Yong-soo was diplomatic at best this week with his description of Popovic’s tactics as “a little defensive”.
“Western Sydney is the kind of team that if it needs one goal to win, it won’t try to hard to score more than two,” he said.
And perhaps he’s right. The bookies definitely agree – although the Wanderers are favourites to win tonight’s game, FC Seoul is being touted to advance to the final nonetheless.
By now we’re all well accustomed to the brand of football that Popovic has the Wanderers playing. It’s a brand based on attrition and reaction, rather than gung-ho ruthlessness. Organisation and discipline is valued over flair and intricate ball-work.
Though it’s worth noting that, bar the semi-final first-leg in Seoul, the Wanderers have managed to find the net in every single Champions League fixture thus far.
Popovic has been able to identify a style that is conducive to success in Asia. It does help when this style is inherent to the way the Wanderers play, but Popovic has shown an ability to tweak and twist his framework to good effect.
Yet there are plenty of those who still feel that the Wanderers boss is too formulaic and austere in the way he approaches games.
Though it can be argued that all of the world’s best managers are characterised by a particular philosophy or style. Even closer to home, we have Josep Gombau with his possession-based model and Ange Postecoglou favouring build-up from deep.
The challenge is of course appropriating that philosophy from game to game, opposition to opposition. There’s more than one way to skin a cat and even more ways to win a football game.
It will certainly be interesting to see if, when Popovic does take charge of a different team, with different genetics, whether or not he’ll persist with the model that has brought him success at the Wanderers.
But for the time being, Popovic is unmoving about his commitment to the West.
With a very winnable fixture in front of an A-League starved Parramatta crowd, Popovic will be confident of moving one step closer to a most unlikely Asian triumph – which, unfortunately for Wanderers fans, will put the boss front and centre of the shop window.
gaga
Guest
Can you?
michael
Guest
I see Poppa as the Alex Ferguson of the A-League. I imagine he might continue for ten years.
bobbym
Guest
Popa's mantra is simple. If you train well, train as you'd play you'll get picked, if you don't you wont.
Leonardo
Roar Guru
MV again leads the fan stats and a credit to the A-League.
Bondy
Guest
Terry The Wanderers are through to the Asian Cup Final are you crying in your beer, Hey. What a miserable human being you are pathetic .
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
Last season MVFC averaged: AAMI Park: 18.6k Docklands: 26.9k With matches at Docklands this season against: MelbCity x 2, WSW, SFC & Brisbane, no reason why we can't push for record average at Docklands of 35-40k over the 5 matches. And we know at least 20k tickets have already been sold to MVFC members for all 8 matches at AAMI Park.
AZ_RBB
Guest
Juric out with a groin injury. WSW Starting Covic, Golec, Topor-Stanley, Hamill, Cole, Mullen, La Rocca, Poljak, Haliti, Bridge, Santalab.
James Anderson
Roar Guru
Baffling isn't it. Mooy clearly wasn't in WSW plans, when one considers the game time he got under Popa last season. Perhaps because he doesn't enjoy defending as much as possession, and looking at WSW statistics, they seem content without the ball. La Rocca and Poljak are therefore the most probable partnership for a defensive midfield pairing, and Aaron Mooy is more suited as a no. 6 rather than a no. 10
Leonardo
Roar Guru
Wow. $100M just to buy an MLS franchise/license. @ 24 teams that's $2.4 Billion in franchise license revenues alone. Makes the A-League's $6M look like a bargain. With 25M registered players, the US football market was always going to boom, just a matter of time and patience.
Ian
Guest
Terry got on the net this morning and looked up teams in the English 3rd or 4th division and found two called brentford and scunthopre and then has written them in his post as if actually knew of them to make his 'comparison'.
Kyle Stewart
Roar Pro
"He’s been chased for the national team job, knocked back offers from rival clubs and deflected interest from foreign suitors." foreign suitors? rival clubs? pull the other one
AZ_RBB
Guest
That's an Australian average of over 10k members per club!!
Punter
Guest
You have to add the WSW also has a 2k+ members on waiting list. Great numbers. SFC has fan day on Sat, hopefully a few more there. Good luck WSW tonight.
Bondy
Guest
Midfielder Interesting piece . I think we have tracked or trended almost identically to the MLS's path with football in Australia at least over the past ten years.. ______________ Fuss I can see why these other sports here in Australia are frighteningly paranoid of us . The only way is up ... Also what are AFL Clubs worth ? ....
Midfielder
Guest
Up to date and at kick off last year we had 86K by season end 94.5 K Adelaide United: 6,374 Brisbane Roar: 10,713 Central Coast Mariners: 4,313 Melbourne City: 8,385 Melbourne Victory: 19,909 Newcastle Jets: 7,663 Perth Glory : 4,506 Sydney FC: 10,097 Wellington Phoenix: 3,105 Western Sydney Wanderers: 15,967 Total = 91,032 Total as of 11/10/2013 = 86,352 Total as of 1/4/2014 = 94,520
Midfielder
Guest
Go the Drive Bys for tonight ....
AZ_RBB
Guest
From memory 95k is what we had at the END of last season? Hopefully this is coupled with average attendance over 14k. MVFC, SFC, WSW and Brisbane should all average over 15k. Adelaide, Newcastle and City might not be too far behind depending on success.
Ben of Phnom Penh
Roar Guru
It is amazing at how similar the style of the Wanderers is to the 2008 version of Adelaide.
Fussball ist unser leben
Roar Guru
Thanks for that link, Bondy. Forbes is a highly-reputed source for financial news & valuations, so that table provides valuable data for "revenue multiples" that could be applied to value a football club. Only last week, I speculated: "I reckon a revenue valuation multiple of 2.5-3 is reasonable to apply at this stage of development of the HAL" The Forbes table for MLS clubs has valuations based on an average "revenue multiple" of 4.0. If we were to apply this multiple to MVFC's last annual revenue, we get a valuation of $57.6 million!
Domenic Trimboli
Expert
"But, managing a football club is much more than drawing arrows on a whiteboard." Here here Fuss. I'm sure that when Poppa does make his next move, it'll be a calculated one. Hopefully.