IF this management lark hadn’t worked out for Ange Postecoglou, he might have had a decent crack at a career in recruitment. A single phone call from the Celtic manager seems to be enough to persuade just about anyone to join his cause.
As goalkeeper Ben Siegrist said earlier this week, and as a slew of players who have signed up at Celtic before him have too, Postecoglou’s pitch on the phone had Harry Kewell sold on a move to Scotland to join his coaching staff instantly.
It wasn’t just their shared nationality that appealed to Kewell, who had his first day at Lennoxtown yesterday, but a shared vision of how they believe a football team should play that persuaded the Australian legend that he could offer something tangible to the Celtic cause. So much so, that he blew off another job opportunity to up sticks and hotfoot it to Glasgow.
“Funnily enough, I was actually in for another interview for another job, and I thought it went really well and I was looking forward to a call back,” Kewell told Celtic TV.
“In between that time, I had a call off the manager, and the way he spoke to me and the way he presented the job, I said yes straight away.
“I didn’t even worry about the next part, because I felt it was an opportunity for me to learn off not only a great manager, not only an Australian manager, but a great manager that has been and has started to do his work into Europe and get his ideas across about what he wants.
“He’s very forthright with what he wants out of his players, and it’s very similar to what I like.
“The way he spoke to me about football and what he wants from me, I said virtually straight away that yes, I would come.
“He always likes to mix things up, he always likes to bring in fresh ideas.
“I said when I spoke to him, I didn’t want to be someone coming up here just because of that Australian link.
“He spoke very positively about monitoring me for a while, and I never knew that, so when he did speak to me about his ideas for what I could bring to the team, it was a no-brainer.
“A lot of people take to Ange, or to the manager, because he plays a certain style of football that everybody wants to see.
“The top teams are playing it, they want to play out from back, they want to play through the middle, the want to create chances, they play that high tempo.
“As soon as they lose the ball, they want to press and win the ball back in high areas, and hopefully tire the other team out and then dominate that way. That’s what people love to come and see.
“Yes, you do come across teams that are very rigid and play a certain way, but his football is very free-flowing and he has that kind of idea of playing that way.”
Kewell sees his role at the club then as very much supplementing what has gone before, rather than coming in to shake things up. If it isn’t broken, and all that.
And despite his vast experience at the top level of the game, he says that he has been hugely impressed already by both the facilities and the staff he encountered on his first day at Celtic.
“I’m kind of blown away,” he said. “I haven’t been at a huge club for a while now, so this all kind of new to me, and it’s [nerve-wracking] to come into such a huge club like this.
“Just seeing the facilities at the moment, it’s fantastic, and the training ground set-up is the perfect size. So, for me, it’s been a brilliant first day.
“I’m really looking to getting to meet the players first and foremost, and then getting to understand exactly their movement patterns.
“Even just sitting there with John (Kennedy) for the last hour or so just talking about how they play, it’s kind of similar to my ideas.
“So, working with the manager as well is going to be great, because the ideas of what I like is similar to what he likes.
“I have strong ambitions, but I’m not going to lie, I’ve come into a huge club, so I’m going to sit and I’m going to learn. I’m going to watch, I’m going to study, and I’m going to see exactly what I can bring to the team.
“I’m not going to go straight in there and go ‘This, this and this.’ That’s not me, I want to learn.
“Even just speaking there to John Kennedy, he’s got so much experience, so I’m going to be picking his brains left, right and centre.”
Kewell of course knows all about what it takes to succeed at Champions League level, having picked up a winner’s medal in the competition as part of the Liverpool side who famously came back from a 3-0 half-time deficit to beat AC Milan on penalties in Istanbul in 2005.
He isn’t about to make any bold predictions about how far Celtic can go in the competition next season, but he does think they will be more than able to give the continent’s big guns a run for their money, particularly on those special European nights at Celtic Park.
“They are special,” he said. “I don’t think people can understand what it’s like unless you’ve been there. You can have that taste, but once you do have that taste you want more.
“You are competing against the best teams in the world, and it is a cup competition, so you have to be at your very best to get far in the competition, and you have to have that element of luck as well.
“It is going to be tough, but the way that the manager has got his team playing, I think they’re going to be a handful.”
