Ange Postecoglou’s Celtic side has been attracting worldwide attention after last night’s incredible spectacle at Paradise where 60,000 Celtic supporters roared the team on to a comprehensive 3-0 victory over theRangers to go to top of the cinch Premiership for the first time under the Australian manager.
And among his post match media duties the Celtic manager speak to a radio station back home in Melbourne and tried to explain what had just happened at Celtic Park. Trying to explain what the Glasgow Derby is all about Ange put it like this: “It’s Port Adelaide v Adelaide Crows by about a thousand times I would say mate! It’s pretty intense,” Scottish Sun reports.
“It’s because it’s generational and it’s passed on from great grandparents to their kids, to their kids and it’s just entrenched in society here. They are pretty passionate about this football club and it’s more than just a football club. It’s part of their lives.
“When you invest whole generations into something, it means a hell of a lot and when you play your greatest rivals in a game like we had this week knowing the consequences. Our job is to send them home happy and make them bounce into work.”
The standard rules in football Glasgow is that there is only one winner and the consequences for the losing manager is usually catastrophic and there’s talk on theRangers forums of GVB being sacked in February unless he drastically turns things around. Postecoglou though understands that this is the rule of the Jungle in football generally.
“I wasn’t worried, it’s kind of my history anyway, mate. Everyone knows I’m Australian. Everyone knows wherever I’ve gone there is always a little bit of a question mark against me. I’ve had a lot of success and the only thing that surprised me is that they managed to fit Postecoglou into a song.
“That should be impossible, but the fans have been brilliant. I know how important they are at this football club. When I came here people were not really aware of just how much knowledge we have about football in Australia and a big part of my mission was to get them to believe in me.
“I said it from day one that my biggest mission was to get everyone to believe in me. Whatever ideas I had or whatever I wanted to do things would be meaningless unless people believed in me.
“They’ve been fantastic since the first day when they probably had to Google me to find out how I am. But I am one of theirs and they supported me. I haven’t won them over totally yet because I haven’t given them the success I want to give them, but they are certainly right behind me and – more importantly – the team.”
Ange Postecoglou and his players will certainly be enjoying reading the media reports on last night, none more so that Sandman’s Definitive Ratings, surely something no Celtic supporter will want to miss today?
Earlier in th season the three narrow loses at Tynecastle, Ibrox and Livingston handicapped any title challenge that was going to be mounted yet slowly but surely the gap at the top of the table has reduced and last night Celtic took over at the top in pretty emphatic fashion, blowing theRangers away, as Aiden McGeady has said earlier today.
“It’s why I love doing what I do, mate. It’s just another challenge. Any manager or coach will tell you there are always challenges, it’s why we are here. The beauty of it is that along the way we haven’t made any excuses or allowances for ourselves.
“I knew that we had to rebuild the team from scratch at the start of the season. But I knew I couldn’t take two or three years to build it. I’ve had success this year when we won the (League) cup, so I just have to make sure that along the way we haven’t made excuses. If we had players missing we still had acceptable form and the players embraced that sort of culture and environment.”
Just realised the point of this is the nose getting longer with every sentence added
Green Brigade are different level man, these guys are doing interactive displays 😭 pic.twitter.com/tCimJNWzeT
— . (@liamcsc) February 3, 2022
Looking at the 3-0 win over his title rivals last night Postecoglou had this to say: “Considering the context of the game, we kind of knew the consequences of winning – it gets us on top – and we haven’t won against them for a little while. So it was a big day for our supporters.
“The first 45 minutes in particular were outstanding. We played some brilliant football. We scored some great goals and probably could have had a couple more. Second half we had to defend a bit more, but I thought we did that well. I am really proud of the players. It was a big night for us and they pulled through.”
Asked off his team was under pressure to win that match given the club not having beaten theRangers since the League Cup Final win in December 2019, Ange answered: “Not really. We have sort of been building slowly through the year. We lost three of our first six games and in the Scottish Premiership you can’t afford to drop too many. We knew for us to be challenging that we had to be almost perfect since then and we have been.
“The players have been dealing with the fact we have to perform every week and overcome every challenge. This was no different. The extra significance was that it’s a game that means a lot to our supporters, so you want to deliver for them as much as anything.
They couldn’t come to the stadium obviously last year to watch so to have 60,000 back was a special night.”
