‘The Glasgow goldfish bowl’ or being ‘under the microscope’ have always been the descriptions used to describe the peculiarities of managing or playing for a club the size of Celtic, in a city where another club significant in size, but somewhat younger in years, also reside.
Even before the days of camera phones and instant uploading to social media accounts – and those images going viral – it must have been a suffocating city in which to ply your footballing trade, now however, there is simply nowhere to hide.
Ange Postecoglou of course has recently had that experience, but somehow seems to take it all in his stride, even advising he’d been invited to dinner at many a Celtic supporter’s home, as those within the Celtic support showed they were perhaps concerned as to a lonely existence for a new employee being a stranger in a new city.
Yet it’s been the chance meetings of those with connections to the other side of the footballing divide that have perhaps created more of a stooshie.
As reported by Andrew Smith in the Scotsman, Postecoglou has been pictured at a cafe with Giovanni van Bronckhorst, and the fact such a chance encounter appeared newsworthy and grew legs is something the Celtic boss admits he found ‘weird’.
Then came a ‘table of four’ and a ‘sit down’ with Graeme Souness and famous St Mirren fan (aye right), Chick Young, that although reported as something perhaps even sinister, was in fact nothing more than passing ships out for a meal and posing for a photograph, before sitting down to their starters – at separate tables!
“I was having dinner with my wife, as I do always, and sometimes I bump in to people in the same industry as me”
“Graeme Souness is a great man and he’s done fantastic things for Scottish football. He walked past my table, we said hello, someone took a picture, and all of a sudden we are best friends! It’s a crazy old world we live in, mate. The only dinner guest I have on a regular basis is my beautiful wife.”
For some such a level of scrutiny may be too much to bear, but it says a lot for Ange Postecoglou’s immediate understanding of the footballing environment he’s now operating in, that he can simply look upon such experiences as part and parcel of life in a football mad city, where competing rivalries create stories where there are none. Postecoglou certainly seems to get it, goodness knows what his dinner date made of it all however.
Niall J
