Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou believes winning the Europa League to end a 17-year trophy drought will change the perception of the club as one which “always fluffed it on the big stage.”
For the Australian coach, beating Manchester United in the all-English final in Bilbao on May 21 is about more than simply capturing silverware and earning a place in next season’s Champions League.
It’s about altering the view of Tottenham from inside and outside the oft-derided London team.
“Look at the historical backdrop to this club and what it has sort of been on for the last 20-odd years,” Postecoglou said on Monday at Tottenham’s media day for the title match. “I feel like it could be a turning point in terms of the way the club is perceived and how it perceives itself.
“Until you do that, irrespective of what else you accomplish, people will say you haven’t won anything. And in our game and life in general, that’s the things which matter when people assess where you’re at.”
Tottenham hasn’t won any silverware since the 2008 English League Cup, and its last European trophy was the 1984 UEFA Cup, the precursor to the Europa League. Before that, the club’s big trophy-winning era was under Bill Nicholson from 1958-74, when Tottenham captured its most recent English league title (1961), three FA Cups (1961, ’62 and ’67), two League Cups (1971 and ’73), the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1963 and the UEFA Cup in 1972.
Postecoglou said he sees the photos inside Tottenham’s stadium and “a lot of them are in black and white.”
“Can we get this group up on that wall?” he posed.
“I guess that’s the hurdle this club has to overcome. Because it’ll always be there. Until you actually do it, then you are fair game for people to say you’ve always fluffed it on the big stage. Irrespective of what the opposition says or anyone else says, what you’ve got to do is break that cycle and whatever motivation you need to do it, you tap into.”
Winning the Europa League might be the only chance Postecoglou has of staying in his job, with Tottenham enduring a dismal campaign on the domestic front. The team is 17th in the 20-club Premier League after losing 20 of its 36 games.
It has felt like Tottenham has given up on the league and put all of its focus on Europe, and Postecoglou laughed when saying he’d be putting his players “in cotton wool” over the next few days at the end of an injury-plagued season.
Even last weekend, playmaker Dejan Kulusevski came off in the 2-0 loss to Crystal Palace with a muscle injury, the last thing Postecoglou needed after losing two midfielders, James Maddison and Lucas Bergvall, for the remainder of the season.
Returning to the squad against Palace, however, was club captain Son Heung-min after a month out injured and the South Korea forward will be hoping to convince Postecoglou of his fitness ahead of the United match. Tottenham has only one game before that, at Aston Villa on Friday.
Postecoglou said sentimentality would not come into play when deciding whether to start Son in the final at the end of the winger’s 10th year at Tottenham.
“It comes down to (being) ready to play,” Postecoglou said of Son, “and make the decision from there. It’s got nothing more than that.”
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