"I told my wife, 'this will be the last game.'" Ange Postecoglou said that the moment Tottenham lifted the Europa League trophy in Bilbao, he already knew he was gone. So when Daniel Levy's people called asking for a meeting, he didn't bother flying back from his holiday in Greece.
"I said, 'I don't really want to see him — what's he going to say to me? I know what he's delivering," Postecoglou told The Howie Games podcast. "Don't worry, just finish it off and we're done."
That's a manager who'd stopped pretending weeks before the official announcement. And honestly? Given what he was describing about the club's internal dynamics, it's hard to argue with the logic.
He knew the club wasn't behind him
Postecoglou made no secret of the fact that prioritising the Europa League over Premier League form was a deliberate call — and that it went down badly with the people who mattered at Spurs. "A lot of people uncomfortable outside the club, certainly inside the club," he said. "They made it clear they didn't agree."
His argument was straightforward: Europa League glory meant Champions League qualification, which meant Champions League money. For a club like Tottenham — perpetually chasing the top four without quite getting there — that kind of shortcut has real structural value. Whether or not you think the 17th-place finish was acceptable, the logic of his gamble isn't obviously wrong.
But logic doesn't matter much if the board never bought in to begin with.
Meanwhile, Spurs are still a mess
The situation Postecoglou left behind hasn't exactly been cleaned up. Thomas Frank spent chunks of last season in a relegation scrap. Roberto De Zerbi came in and kept them up on the final day — by the skin of their teeth. This season has opened with two straight Premier League defeats, and Spurs head to Nottingham Forest on Saturday looking for their first points of the campaign.
Given that instability, it's worth asking what exactly Levy's plan has been. A Europa League winner, a near-relegation, a managerial carousel — Tottenham's odds of competing for anything meaningful this season look shaky at best. De Zerbi needs time and backing, neither of which have historically been guaranteed commodities at the club.
As for Postecoglou, his post-Spurs track record isn't flattering — 39 days at Nottingham Forest before the door closed there too. He's now managing Al-Nassr in the Saudi Pro League. A far cry from European nights in Bilbao, but then again, he saw all of this coming from across a hotel room in Greece.
