SYDNEY — Arsenal legend Ian Wright hopes that new Tottenham Hotspur manager Ange Postecoglou will bring the Gunners’ cross-town rivals “the success that they desperately need.”
Postecoglou, 57, became the first Australian to be appointed to a head coaching role in the Premier League when he was announced as Spurs boss after leaving Scottish giants Celtic at the end of last season.
“Ange has done fantastically at Celtic,” Wright told ESPN. “He seems to be somebody that’s a very cool, really calm character. I think it’s a fantastic job for him to get the Tottenham job.
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“What you’re hoping he can do is get the opportunity and the chance to bring the players he wants to do, get his coaching philosophy, how he wants to do it, across to the players, and hopefully bring them to the success that they desperately need.”
Whether or not Postecoglou can rely on the presence of Harry Kane for the Premier League season, which kicks-off this weekend when Spurs make the short trip to face Brentford, is becoming increasingly uncertain.
Spurs were without Kane for their 4-2 friendly loss to Barcelona on Tuesday, and reports have suggested that Postecoglou is resigned to losing the striker to Bayern Munich after the Bavarians made a fourth offer, this time €110 million, for the England captain.
“You hope that they start well,” said Wright. “We don’t know what’s going to happen with Harry Kane — if he’s going to be there for him — but I’m sure that [Postecoglou] has got provisions in his head of how he’s going to have to deal with that.
“You hope that Ange can start well because for all coaches, going into the Premier League, whether you’re from Australia, wherever you’re from, when you’re going in for the first time, you’re going to be tested because you’re coming up against the cream of the crop in respect of coaches.”
Wright has been crisscrossing Australia in recent weeks to support the Women’s World Cup, watching France stroll past Morocco and into the quarterfinals of the tournament on Tuesday night alongside former Arsenal boss and current chief of Global Football Development for FIFA, Arsene Wenger.
Having previously used his platform to call for the Women’s Euros to leave a lasting legacy and allow every girl across England to play football, the 59-year-old told ESPN that this same kind of target should be at the forefront of legacy efforts for the World Cup.
Rival sports such as Australian Rules would always exist, Wright acknowledged, but he made clear that any girl, any child, who chose to play football should have the ability to do so.
“It’s the natural progression,” he said. “The girls and the boys, they want to play football.
“Aussie Rules has been going for so many years, it’s always going to be there. Nothing’s going to change that. But there shouldn’t be any blockage in respect to kids seeing people like [Matildas captain] Sam Kerr, girls seeing people like Sam Kerr, and being inspired to want to play football — then it’s up to the authorities to give them the opportunity to do that.
“I don’t think it should be one or the other. The kids have got a choice to make. Like Sam Kerr, when she was 12 she couldn’t carry on playing Aussie Rules, she went to football and it’s football’s gain. I think that that’s quite unfair.
“It’s just the way it is, you know the progression of the game. With a World Cup in your country is going to inspire girls and boys to want to play.”
