I don’t know if you have ever been to Bodo - a Norwegian town that sits inside the Arctic Circle - in February before, but let me tell you, it isn’t for the faint hearted.
When Celtic played there in the UEFA Conference League during Ange Postecoglou’s first season in charge of the club, I was despatched to this stunningly beautiful but utterly baltic part of the world to cover the match for this paper.
With temperatures below minus 20 and howling winds whipping off the water directly into the coupon, it comfortably remains the coldest place I have ever been. And I once covered a game at Broadwood in December.
The iciest blast of the trip though came from the mouth of Postecoglou. One radio reporter, who shall remain nameless, enquired after Celtic’s defeat and exit from the tournament whether there could be comfort taken from the fact that his team’s schedule had now lightened somewhat.
It seemed a fair enough question, given that Celtic were at that point engaged in a nip and tuck title race with Rangers, which surely had to take priority over UEFA’s newest and least glamorous tournament. Plus, the fact that Postecoglou had fielded a weakened side after a first leg 3-1 defeat at Celtic Park hinted that he was making concessions precisely for that reason.
Instead of taking the opportunity to spin a positive out of the situation though, Postecoglou tore the reporter a new one.
“How can losing a game be a good thing, mate?” he shot back.
When a brave local reporter then dared to ask for Postecoglou’s thoughts on how far Bodo/Glimt could go in the tournament – again, a pretty routine question in such circumstances – he wasn’t for humouring that either.
“I don’t care, mate,” he said, before taking his leave.
Sound familiar? When watching Postecoglou’s body language this week and his demeanour both with the media and in the dugout, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that first glimpse into his intolerance for inanity, and for mediocrity.
Over the last few days, he has been bombarded with both of these things, and largely from his own supporters.
As soon as I heard him being asked a question about his own team’s fans wanting Tottenham to lose their match against Manchester City in order to stop rivals Arsenal winning the title, I was immediately transported back to that tiny press room in Bodo.
I knew also that the continuing narrative around it would eventually lead to the sort of reaction we witnessed after the match, exacerbated further still by the way the Spurs fans behaved in their own stadium.
There was minimal backing of his side. Cheers, even, when Manchester City scored. Thousands of them performed ‘The Poznan’ when their team fell behind. All of these things are anathema to Postecoglou.
When he was at Celtic, he got the club, and the fans got him. It was a perfect match, with the Australian bringing back a culture where winning was the minimum standard and excuses weren’t tolerated.
He now looks like a man in the wrong movie, or certainly, the wrong club. He appears not to recognise himself in what it is that Spurs stand for, which he seems to have now surmised is an acceptance of their inferiority.
I covered Celtic and Postecoglou closely during his two years in charge, but to say that any of us on that beat got close to him would be stretching it in the extreme. He kept his players at arm’s length, so he wasn’t going to be sharing a beer with the likes of us.
As long as you were clued up and treated him with respect, though, that would go both ways. He could be funny and amiable, and despite his reputation for slapping the media around on camera, he was more than happy to have a yarn – as he might say - with the newspaper pack away from the formal setting of the press conference.
But he would make a pretty awful poker player. It’s not that he struggles to hide his emotions - or his contempt, more accurately - it’s that he doesn’t make any attempt to.
When then Rangers manager Michael Beale called him a ‘lucky man’, for instance, it got under his skin. It didn’t derail his focus though, but made him doubly determined to succeed, as much for the pleasure of rubbing Beale’s face in his own words as for actually lifting the trophies themselves, it felt like.
You can see it too when he is asked for the umpteenth time about whether he might require a ‘plan B’, or perhaps adopt a more pragmatic approach to his all-out attacking style when coming up against a higher standard of opposition.
Again, on the face of it, a reasonable enough suggestion you might think, particularly in the context of his European record at Celtic or some of the defeats that have been dished out to his Tottenham side this term amid what has still been a reasonably successful season.
But anyone asking those questions of him just doesn’t get Postecoglou. He is uncompromising. It is his way, or the highway, and he is more than happy to live and die by the footballing principles he believes in. In fact, it is those principles that define him.
What he will not accept is defeatism, or an acceptance of either his own perceived station in life or that of the team he is managing. It is how he eventually dragged himself from the A-League to the Premier League, and he is not about to change now that he is there. Either as a person or as a coach.
Some managers might be quite content with what Postecoglou has achieved in his first season in the English Premier League. He has taken a Spurs side shorn of one of the world’s greatest strikers, implemented an exciting brand of football, and taken them to within a couple of games of Champions League qualification after finishing eighth last season.
But if you are asking Postecoglou to settle for that, then you are asking him to be someone that he isn’t. And certainly not the person that Daniel Levy hired to try and finally shake the ‘Spursy’ out of Tottenham Hotspur.
What is eating Ange Postecoglou? Mediocrity, mate. And he will not settle for that.
