Football world erupts after Ange Postecoglou torn to shreds by pundit for his ‘nuclear-strength bull***'
After being sacked by Tottenham last week the football world has largely rallied around Ange Postecoglou, thanking him for his service and his work in breaking Spurs' trophy drought.
However not everyone has been kind with one pundit in particular sticking the boot into the Aussie on his way out.
Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy axed the boss early on Saturday (AEST), just over two weeks after Spurs lifted the Europa League trophy.
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Victory over Manchester United in Spain ended the club's 17-year wait for a trophy, but it wasn't enough to save his job after Tottenham's worst-ever Premier League season where they finished 17th.
Regardless, in the aftermath of his sacking several of the club's stars came out in support of the Aussie manager, with the likes of Yves Bissouma, captain Heung-Min Son, Richarlison, James Maddison, Pedro Porro, Micky van de Ven and Lucas Bergvall all penning heartfelt messages of thanks.
While others in the sporting world noted that Postecoglou leaves with a Tottenham legacy that can never be tarnished, ending the club's painful silverware drought.
But while the tone has been overwhelmingly positive towards Postecoglou, a few pundits have sung a different tune, in particular, Jonathan Liew of The Guardian, whose scathing opinion piece on the Aussie raised more than a few eyebrows.
In a truly inflammatory piece on Wednesday, Liew hinted Postecoglou was mostly talk with little substance and suggested he would be better off managing the likes of the struggling Japanese club Gamba Osaka or Australian cellar dwellars Perth Glory.
'For Ange Postecoglou, who always bristled at the idea that his wealth of coaching experience had somehow been earned in inferior competitions, perhaps his departure from Tottenham really can be a kind of springboard: to one of these prestigious, equally demanding leagues he keeps talking about,' Liew wrote in The Guardian.
'Maybe the struggling Gamba Osaka or Perth Glory could well have a vacancy soon. Motherwell are still looking. A step down? That's just your old-world, Eurocentric, Prem-brained snobbery showing right through there, mate.'
But his swipe at the Aussie didn't stop there, summing up Postecoglou's reign rather harshly.
'There may never have been a manager better at defining his own terms of achievement; a managerial reign so evidently built upon a towering silo of nuclear-strength bull***,' Liew continued.
'A coach who urged us to judge him on the league now no longer judges himself on the league.
'A coach who blames Tottenham's abject league performance on a freak injury crisis also takes no responsibility for that injury crisis, for a style of play in which Tottenham comfortably spend more time in high-intensity sprints than any other Premier League team.
'A coach who claims he takes no notice of what is said and written about him has spent a suspiciously high proportion of this season reacting to things that have been said and written about him.'
However, his opinion piece did not garner the kind of support he surely envisioned, with the football world turning on Liew.
Australian sports reporter Mark Gottlieb wrote on X: 'Used to be a huge fan of Jonathan Liew's writing on football & cricket but he's consistently embarrassed himself with his coverage of Ange Postecoglou over the years. All the way back to those rude, arrogant podcast comments. Rarely seen such blatant England-centric snobbery.'
'This is awfully weird from Jonathan Liew,' X account Spurs Army wrote.
'I found this piece on Ange Postecoglou from Jonathan Liew oddly personal in its criticism of him,' another added.
'Good to see people calling out Jonathan Liew's latest snide piece on Ange Postecoglou. He's always had that tone about his writing in general and this vendetta was a personal one from the early days of the tenure,' a fourth wrote.
Jonathan Liew previously admitted he 'can't stand' Ange
The latest outburst isn't the first time Liew has torn into the Aussie - on a podcast in 2023 he accused Ange of speaking 'bulls***'.
'I'm just not having Ange,' Liew said on The Guardian's Football Weekly podcast in November 2023.
'I'm not having Ange Postecoglou. As a coach, I can't stand him.'
When put to him by host Max Rushden that Postecoglou is a 'lovely man', Liew responded: 'He comes across as a lovely man. All of the people saying he's great, saying he's a great bloke — nobody knows him.
'All you know about him are the little 45-second clips that come from his press conferences or that turn up on your Twitter feed every week.'
Liew then took potshots at Postecoglou, mocking his Aussie drawl and use of the word 'mate'.
'Honestly, it's just such bulls***,' Liew said.
'He is an unbelievable talker,' he said.
'On the pitch, things have been going well, but they have a good squad. There was a thirst there for these players to go out and play a high line. I'm not saying he hasn't coached them well. I'm just saying he hasn't coached them brilliantly. He's just said some things. Made them feel good about themselves and his good players have been infused with good vibes.
'What we're seeing now and what we're going to see over the medium and long term is that Spurs are going to regress. They are nowhere near title contenders. They don't have a coach or a squad that's going to get them anywhere near the title race.'
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