He was in Daniel Levy's shoes 30 years ago. Instead of sacking Ange, he called in sick

The Age

a day ago

George Vasilopoulos made a lot of big decisions as president of South Melbourne Hellas – from bringing the great Ferenc Puskás to the club as coach, to negotiating the construction of Lakeside Stadium with Victoria's then-Premier Jeff Kennett when Melbourne stole the Australian F1 Grand Prix from Adelaide, to helping shape the future of Australian soccer during his time as a board member of the national federation.
But his biggest decision was the one he didn't make – and the one Daniel Levy couldn't resist.
Five games into the 1996-97 National Soccer League season – Ange Postecoglou's first in charge of South Melbourne – they were bottom of the ladder, without a win. 'Bottom last,' as Vasilopoulos says. It was the sort of form that no coach would survive at Hellas, who were then regarded as Australia's premier club – and under the previous president, Sam Papasavas, it was usually Vasilopolous who would have to deliver the news to those in the firing line.
'Sam used to send me and the secretary to the airport to say [to the coach], 'Please don't come on Tuesday.' We'd sack him at the airport, before he comes back to the dressing room,' he recalls.
Postecoglou, aged just 30 at the time, was a controversial appointment to begin with – but one that Vasilopoulos deeply believed in, despite the prevailing view around the club that it was a gamble gone predictably wrong.
It was a view that even Postecoglou himself seemed to share.
After losing 2-1 away to Adelaide City – their fifth game without success – Vasilopoulos remembers going into South Melbourne's dressing room at Hindmarsh Stadium and closing the door behind him.
'Ange got very emotional,' he says. 'I looked at him. 'Ange, what's happening?' He said, 'Well, pres ... maybe this wasn't meant to be for me.' These are his words, not mine.
'I stopped a little bit, because I could see he was serious. I said, 'Ange, promise me one thing. Don't say anything after we leave here to a reporter, to the players, or anyone on the committee – because you won't be able to take it back, Ange. What you told me now, if you say it to anybody else, you won't be able to take it back.''
Senior players had already told Vasilopoulos that Postecoglou wasn't the problem. If anything, the team was trying too hard for him, they said.
The next day, there was a board meeting planned. Vasilopoulos' vice-president, Bill Georgantis, gave him a call to tell him the other directors had gathered enough signatures to have Postecoglou sacked. They had the numbers. The longer Ange was in the job, the worse off they thought club would be.
'I was tired,' Vasilopoulos said. 'But I had this inside information. I said to my wife: 'Can you ring the secretary? Tell him George won't be coming, he's not feeling well today.''
With no president, the board meeting couldn't take place. Mission accomplished. Postecoglou kept his job, and South Melbourne won their next game 1-0 against the Newcastle Breakers – beginning a six-match unbeaten run.
It wasn't a lie. Vasilopoulos was feeling a bit off. But only a bit.
'I'm not a billionaire like him, but I would have given him a few words of advice: 'Mate, you're making a bloody big mistake here'.'
What George Vasilopolous would have told Daniel Levy
'It was 60-40,' he says – as in, 60 per cent motivated by the desire to foil the move against Postecoglou by the other board members, and 40 per cent genuine tiredness.
'After that, what happened? Back-to-back championships, going to Brazil, winning everything.'
'This is not the way to do it'
Vasilopoulos, now 72, is perhaps the first person in football to have recognised the greatness within Postecoglou.
So what did he notice, and when?
'See, that's what these guys now at Tottenham Hotspur don't know,' he says. 'These people, I don't think they know the game like I do.'
Vasilopoulos is still coming to terms with the decision taken by Daniel Levy and his board to sack Postecoglou, barely two weeks after he guided Spurs to victory in the Europa League – their first trophy in 17 years, and the greatest moment in the club's modern history.
Levy has now been through 19 different managers in his 24 years as chairman of the club – the latest being former Brentford boss Thomas Frank, whose appointment was confirmed on Thursday night (AEST).
As the flood of messages from Spurs players over the past week has shown, they all wanted Postecoglou to stay.
'I would have loved to be in the boardroom with this guy [Levy],' Vasilopoulos says.
'I would have kicked him under the table. I'm not a billionaire like him, but I would have given him a few words of advice: 'Mate, you're making a bloody big mistake here. I'll save you a lot of millions of dollars. Please, don't do it. Think about this. Give him another year.' The next year, it would have happened for Ange.
'The players … they know the game, the feeling in the dressing room – from a very young age, they know. I knew that feeling too. And that's what they're going to go through now in London.'
Vasilopoulos is speaking from personal experience. In the 1983 season, a few years after he had joined the committee, South Melbourne went through four different coaches – Tommy Docherty, Mick Watson, Rale Rasic and finally Len McKendry, who would go on to give Postecoglou his debut as a player the following season.
'As a young man sitting back in the boardroom, I had no say,' he says.
'I said to myself, driving home one day: 'George, this is not the way to do it. You've got to put all your time and effort to get to know the feeling in the dressing room, see how the players feel.' Because the whole game is there. The feeling in the dressing room, for me, it's like religion. It's like going to church. 'Get to know that and never make this mistake, George.' I never thought I'd get this opportunity, to become president of this club. 'But if you ever get a chance, or get some influence, whoever is there ... advise them not to bloody do this, mate.''
When he became president in 1988, Vasilopoulos says he ran South Melbourne like a 'supremo'. That's not arrogance, but the reality at a club where, back then, there was no general manager or chief executive. Unlike the other board members, who would come and go, he would put in 12-hour shifts every day, without pay – so every major call was his to make, from which players they'd bring in, to what meals they'd eat after matches, to who they'd employ as the coach.
He knew the Postecoglou family, and Ange's father Jim, very well. He remembers the day when Postecoglou was named in South Melbourne's senior team for the first time. Vasilopoulos had just opened the gates at Middle Park when Ange, flanked by his old man, walked in with a big smile on his face.
'The youth team was playing a curtain-raiser,' he says. 'I said, 'You're a bit late for the game, mate.' He said, 'No, no, no, George. Len McKendry called me into the squad!'
'I said, 'Mate!' I hugged him and I kissed him.'
Vasilopoulos used to spend a lot of time with the team, on buses and planes, in and around the dressing room. In Postecoglou, he observed a rare type of character who was the 'conduit' between the various social cliques, rather than belonging to any of them. He could tell he had everyone's respect. And he could see the effect he would have on other players, particularly as captain. For example, on long away trips, Postecoglou would come up with quizzes – sport, trivia, pop culture, whatever – to get their minds off football and relax them.
'No other player did that,' he says.
After Frank Arok was sacked, and Postecoglou filled in as interim coach for the final three games of the 1995-96 season, there was a push for South Melbourne to land a big name, befitting of their status – someone like Adelaide City's Zoran Matic.
'I had to find a way of not getting him,' Vasilopoulos says.
'He wanted $150,000. He wanted a brand new car, a house with a swimming pool. I took it to the board. I said, 'It's a lot of money. I can't find it. If you can find it, we'll bring him here.'
'But Ange was behind the scenes, you know. I told him, 'I'm thinking of giving you the job.' Frank said, 'Don't look anywhere else. Do whatever you want to do politically.' Because he knew that the board wasn't sometimes friendly towards Ange. People in Melbourne wanted someone big for Hellas. It was a big club. And not having the experience, it was very difficult to convince people the guy would do the job.'
Not long afterwards, Vasilopoulos made a bold prediction: that Postecoglou would go on to coach the Socceroos one day. He said that to Peter Desira, the former Herald Sun football writer, upon his appointment.
'I used to do a lot of interviews ... I knew what people wanted to read. I was good at that,' Vasilopoulos says.
'Peter said, 'George, I'm going to print this. I don't want you to look foolish, mate. This is a big statement, what you've said.' He printed it. Some of the board members said, 'George, you shouldn't make a statement like this. It makes the club look a bit foolish.'
'But I knew. It was in my heart.'
'I believe in something bigger than us'
Vasilopoulos stepped down in 2002, after 25 years of service on the committee and 14 as South Melbourne's president. There was a move to squeeze him off the board, and the catalyst was the club's greatest moment on the international stage: the inaugural FIFA Club World Championship, held in Brazil in 2000.
At that tournament, Postecoglou went head-to-head with Alex Ferguson's Manchester United, Romario's Vasco da Gama and Mexican club Necaxa. Though Hellas lost all three games, they gave an excellent account of themselves and the Australian game – and their appearance netted them $4.5 million, as well as an extra $1.7 million for Soccer Australia, who at that stage were in financial turmoil.
That prize money was like 'divine intervention' for Vasilopoulos. When the club had needed cash in the past, the only way he could secure a loan from the bank was by providing a personal guarantee. At that stage, they owed $500,000.
'I would have lost my house,' he says.
'The ground didn't belong to us, we couldn't give them security. Brazil saved it. [The prize money] cleared everything. Money in the bank when I left. It helped Ange to get a better job [as Australian national youth coach].
'I believe in something bigger than us.'
But money changes people. Vasilopoulos soon started hearing gossip about him being past his use-by date as president, how the club could make bigger strides with new blood on the committee, and how they didn't want him interfering.
'I could hear all these things. It was very hurtful,' he says.
'We went to the AGM ... I could see some noises coming up. My family used to come. I've got two boys. One of them said, 'Dad, I think you've had your time here.'
'When we managed the club under crisis, everyone was happy. I would find the money, we'd get the wages, everyone used to get paid. Now all of a sudden, with money in the bank, everyone wants to be president. I walked away. They wanted to do their own thing.
'That was my big disappointment: not enough respect, not enough recognition what you've done, and 'we can do better'. That's the new mentality of the young people. I looked at [my predecessors] like they're my mentors. I learned from them, I respected them, I made sure there's room up in the VIP for them. These guys here, they turn off. They stop talking. They used to send me a letter, signed by autopen, like Joe Biden. You don't sign an autopen letter to me and ask me to come to my ground – I build the freaking ground, anyway.'
Vasilopoulos says he hasn't been to a South Melbourne game since – or any game of football anywhere, barring a few exceptions, which he did not particularly enjoy. He still feels hurt. His connection to South Melbourne runs so deep that even talking about his time in the game and how it ended can feel overwhelming. That's why he has very rarely spoken to media since his involvement in the game ended, despite many requests – including some from this masthead.
'For the last 20 years, I never have any interviews. People ring me up, they want TV, radio – no, I don't do it, because it brings up this emotion,' he says. 'I can't control it. I want to bury it. I got very tired, you know? At the end, I got chronic fatigue.
'I know how much work I put in there. I prefer to stay away. I just check the news. Plus, the other thing now – I cannot watch South Melbourne go and play Oakleigh, or Northcote, in front of 200 people, in the cold and wet. Why would I do that? Because I get more disappointed to see my team play against that – no, I could not do it. So I locked it out. The memories I have are good memories: winning championships, being with Ange, being in the dressing room, going to Brazil. That's the memories I want.'
Tears welled as he went through his personal story, from growing up in the Greek city of Kalamata ('Where the olives come from'), to his memories listening to soccer games on a small battery-operated Philips radio ('Thank Christ for those batteries'), to the first match he and his brother saw once they'd arrived in Australia between South Melbourne and Brunswick Juventus in May 1965. At first, they thought they were watching the Greek national team and the real Juventus from Italy, because their uniforms and logos matched the ones on the player cards they had collected back home.
'For me, that was the moment,' he says. 'I fell in love.'
Vasilopoulos continues to draw immense pride from Postecoglou's journey, which he helped launch. Since Ange left Australia in 2017, he has been following the fortunes of Yokohama F. Marinos, Celtic and Tottenham Hotspur from his couch at home. He prayed for him before the Europa League final, and hoped against hope that Levy wouldn't pull the trigger.
He's not sure what's next for Postecoglou, who has already been sounded out by other clubs in Europe and the Premier League. All he knows is that he's far from finished at football's top level.
But there is one job he wants to see him take on, whether it's now or in the latter stages of his managerial career – one that's been offered to him in the past.
'I see Ange as the next coach of the national team of Greece,' Vasilopoulos says.
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'I don't know the situation of the current coach, how many years contract he has. But if I was the Greek federation, whoever is in charge there now – if you print it, they will read it – I want this guy to put Ange's name there. And also the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis. He's the guy that's supporting a lot of people that left Greece – like Ange, like me – at a very young age, and made success in their field. Because he's asking people to come back.
'This is for the prime minister now, Mitsotakis, from me: put Ange's name there.
'Greece hasn't won anything since Euro 2004. Ange can do something like that. They've got a squad of beautiful young players now. He will lift Greece to the European standard. This man can do it, I believe it.
'I don't like travelling any more. Over 70, your life changes. I don't have the energy. But I'll go to Greece for this. At the press conference, I'll be there.'