ANGE Postecoglou has revealed how he first moved into coaching when he was aged just 12 - and led his side to silverware in his very first season.
Postecoglou took over at South Melbourne after a knee injury ended his playing days 25 years ago and has remained in the dugout ever since.
The Greek-Australian has had spells at Panachaiki, Brisbane Roar, Melbourne Victory, Australia and Yokohama F Marinos since then.
The Celtic manager felt that he was always destined to go down that route after taking charge of his school team as a kid and taking them to the state championship.
“I coached my first ever team when I was 12, “ he said. “Looking back, it seems crazy. To me more than anyone else. I don’t know why people were listening to a 12-year-old but there must have been something about me that made them.
“It’s quite bizarre when you think about it, but it’s probably why I have always felt more of a coach. I struggled with my playing career as I just felt that my destiny was to be a manager. That was the space where I always felt most comfortable.
“I would have been annoying as a 12-year-old coach. In fact, I am sure that I would have annoyed a lot of people. But that’s when the coaching career started.
“There hadn’t been a soccer team before and we put a group together. We had a music teacher who said he would take the team, but there wasn’t any coaching or training. He would sit and mark his homework while we all just had a kickabout.
“After the first few sessions, I took control. It sounds bizarre because I was so young. But for some reason, I took control of the whole thing and people listened.
“I didn’t just pretend to be the coach. I picked the team, we had sessions and I told everyone what to do. Looking back, I think I got power hungry! I was a player, coach and captain.”
Postecoglou added: “One of my closest mates, we are still friends to this day, wanted to bring me down a peg or two. He decided that the team would have a vote to see if I should continue as captain. We had the vote and it ended up being unanimous.
“I turned to my mate and said: ‘How could it be unanimous if you called the vote in the first place?’ And he said: ‘I voted for you too. You are the best person for the job but I just wanted to see if other people would vote for you!’
“I was running the show and to this day, I don’t understand why anyone listened to me. I wasn’t anything special! My mates still say: ‘Why were we listening to you back then?’ But we ended up winning the under-12s state championship at South Melbourne’s ground.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here