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Celtic fans hearing the news that they are close to appointing a new manager from Japan’s J League would have been justified if they felt a little underwhelmed, considering the names linked to the Parkhead role since Neil Lennon’s exit.

Ange Postecoglou was not the first name on anyone’s lips. In fact, most European football fans will probably not have heard of the 55-year-old Australian, other than that he led his country at the 2014 World Cup.

Celtic have admitted that former Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe was their first choice to lead next season’s fightback against newly-crowned Scottish champions Rangers, but the two parties could not agree a deal for “reasons outwith both his and our control”.

Lucien Favre, Chris Wilder and even Frank Lampard – perhaps seeking to follow ex-England teammate Gerrard north of the border – are supposedly candidates according to the bookies.

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But Postecoglou? Surely, us ignorant Europeans will think, there are better options out there than a coach whose biggest club success was two Australian titles with Brisbane Roar a decade ago?

Yet ask any Australian soccer fan and they’ll likely have a different impression of Postecoglou. Indeed, for a country that has only really fallen in love with the sport over the past two decades – with the advancement of the A League and the improved fortunes of the national team – Postecoglou being linked with a big European club job is about time.

Reporting on the news of Celtic’s interest in the current Yokohama F. Marinos boss, The Sydney Morning Herald said: “He has certainly earned the right for a tilt at a job such as Celtic”.

A piece for ABC News in Australia claimed having an Aussie coach managing a club competing in European tournaments is “Australian football’s final frontier”.

“No Australian coach has made it in Europe, or even been given a chance at a ‘big’ club,” they write.

“While this is a huge opportunity for Postecoglou personally, it can also lay the platform to demonstrate that an Australian passport need not be an obstacle to managing on the game’s biggest stages.”

And an article for FOX claimed Postecoglou is “arguably the greatest football coach Australia has ever produced”.

Big praise, then, from those Down Under. But what can Celtic fans expect of Postecoglou should he rock up at Parkhead this summer? Well, the coach is famed in his homeland for championing attack-minded football and successfully revolutionised the national team as its mid-2000s Golden Generation was waning away, which led to their Asian Cup triumph in 2015.

An intense and expressive coach, he has been branded Australia’s answer to Pep Guardiola. When he quit the national team to join Yokohama in 2018 it took them just a year to win the Japanese title. The club currently sit third in the J League.

Being connected with a European side like Celtic is also not a surprise considering Postecoglou’s agent is Frank Trimboli, who counts Raphael Varane, Son Heung-min and Kyle Walker as clients, while the Marinos themselves are part of the City Football Group that owns Guardiola’s Manchester City.

It has been reported that Postecoglou was recommended to Celtic by Fergal Harkin, City’s departing football partnerships manager who is tipped to join the Hoops as director of football this summer. On top of this, Celtic chief executive Peter Lawwell is leaving his role, with Dominic McKay installed to oversee the club’s latest transformation.

The pieces, then, may well be falling into place as Celtic prepare to meet the bar set by Rangers in 2021-22. But even though Postecoglou has, as the Herald put it, “earned the right” to manage Celtic, no manager will last long at Parkhead unless results immediately improve.

The pressure, therefore, is on from the start to get the Hoops back to the top of Scottish football.

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Next Celtic manager: 5 contenders to replace Neil Lennon as he leaves club – from John Kennedy to Eddie Howe

from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2R6dr6d

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There was a clip of Mason Mount and Reece James relaxing on the turf in the centre of the Estádio do Dragão pitch, long after the final whistle had blown in the Champions League final, winners’ medals hugging their necks, legs splayed, resting back on their hands. 

Beside them, the platform once holding the line of dignitaries shaking their hands in congratulations and the arched podium where they had lifted the giant trophy with their team-mates were empty. An explosion of shiny Chelsea blue and white confetti littered the grass.

They were doing what Rio Ferdinand said he regretted not doing after his 2008 Champions League victory. Ferdinand felt dragged from pillar to post for interviews and greetings in Moscow, but here were two young men soaking in having achieved the seemingly impossible: rising through the academy at an elite Premier League club to play starring roles in an astonishing Champions League campaign, all before their 23rd birthdays. 

Mount and James’s stories are well documented, of course, but less is known about another former academy player who has enjoyed a similar rise through the club’s ranks. 

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Joe Edwards was a bit before their time, joining Chelsea as an eight-year-old and trying to succeed at Cobham when there was little precedent. Edwards didn’t make it at Chelsea, nor even as a professional footballer and Neil Bath, Chelsea’s longstanding head of youth development, delivered the devastating news to the 16-year-old that he would not be offered a scholarship deal. Yet Bath would still become a guiding figure, leading him down one of football’s different paths.

Edwards, 34, could be seen sharing a selfie with Mount, arm-in-arm on the pitch in Portugal after the final, and there is good reason why the pair would want to share the moment. Their individual successes are indicative of one another, their climbs running parallel as Mount made it into the first-team and Edwards became assistant manager.

Edwards speaks of Chelsea “as my home”, and it in some ways he grew up with two families: his traditional one and that of the football club where he has now spent the majority of his life.

“Pretty much since I was a kid, I’ve been aspiring to get to the first team, firstly as a player and then as a coach,” Edwards said. “It’s been a long journey with some fantastic experiences.” 

Bath handed Edwards a job coaching Chelsea’s Under 9s, and it is there he would first come across a kid with spiky hair and a cheeky smile who he would watch become an England star and Champions League winner.

“They’ve moved up together, they’ve gone through the ranks, that’s a special moment there for two young men,” Joe Cole, the former Chelsea attacking midfielder who has worked in their academy, said.

Edwards’s move into the first-team came via Frank Lampard. Towards the end of Lampard’s playing days, Edwards led some of his training sessions and they left an impression on the midfielder. Their relationship grew when Lampard did his coaching badges at Cobham and they stayed in regular contact when Lampard became manager at Derby County.

After years of success as a youth coach – including multiple FA Youth Cup trophies – Edwards went on a sort of secondment into Chelsea’s recruitment department, looking after their loan players. He was the Under 23 head coach by the time Lampard took over and promoted him to assistant manager.

It’s impossible to say if Mount wouldn’t have made it into Chelsea’s first-team without Edwards bending Lampard’s ear, staking the player’s claim. Talented players are talented players, but footballers often also speak of quirks of fate and the fortune of circumstance.

Marcus Rashford was only handed his Manchester United bow after injuries to Will Keane, the academy striker deemed ahead of him in the pecking order, and Anthony Martial, but two debut goals propelled him into the mainstream. 

Regardless, Edwards was one of the coaches picked out by Mount’s father, Tony, for helping his son break through. 

Under Lampard, with Edwards by his side, into the first-team came Mount, James, Tammy Abraham, Fikayo Tomori. And the list of players Edwards has coached along their journey to first-team football is impressively long. 

Striker Abraham and defender Tomori were part of his first Under 8s group. Of course, not all of them will be able to establish themselves in the seniors. Abraham looks set to leave after being omitted from Thomas Tuchel’s Champions League final squad, while Tomori is expected to make a loan move to AC Milan permanent. Both have been capped by England and could well become leaders in their fields.

Mount, set to be a starter for England at the European Championships, followed in Edwards’s next age group and a decade later would score in the FA Youth Cup final for his Under 18s. Edwards was there in 2008 when James, potentially England’s next first-choice right-back, signed schoolboy terms.

While pushing young players to succeed, Edwards kept pushing himself. He broadened his horizons at the Football Association, working with England’s Under 18s, and has paid visits to clubs across the world. Bath credits him with playing “a significant part in not only our trophy wins but in creating and developing a culture that is crucial to sustained success”.

All the while, he has worked with a string of influential coaches. Brendan Rodgers, the Leicester City manager, Steve Clarke, Scotland manager, Paul Clement, who has been Carlo Ancelotti’s assistants at Real Madrid and Chelsea, Steve Holland, Gareth Southgate’s assistant, all worked under Bath in Chelsea’s academy.

Now he is learning from Tuchel, who after masterminding a surprise Champions League victory against Manchester City is being hailed as the man who will be Pep Guardiola’s undoing.

Alongside Anthony Barry, Edwards took Chelsea’s first-team training during the few days in January between Lampard leaving and Tuchel starting. The German held a meeting with Edwards on arrival and assured the younger coach of his first-team role.

Chelsea’s academy is finally producing the players they wanted – have they also unearthed and nurtured the next great manager?

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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3wAY2tI

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