Ange Postecoglou made no mention of a farewell as he dealt with the media following Yokohama Marinos’ defeat to Honda in the Emperor Cup.
Despite intense speculation linking the Australian with a move to Celtic and some interpretation of his waving and clapping of supporters as a sign that he was leaving there was nothing said in the post-match media conference to suggest that his three year stay is about to end.
Beyond saying that it was a very disappointing result Postecoglou said next to nothing of any interest for non Marinos fans with a transcript appearing on the club website:
At the end, I lost in the form of a penalty shootout. It was a disappointing result, and I think that the result that the opponent did to the last minute led the opponent to victory. Anyway, it was a disappointing match for us.
Overnight there has been nothing out of Australian to suggest that their former national team manager is about to take up a high profile role in European football.
Celtic are now into day 106 without a manager, a week today what is left of the playing squad return to Lennoxtown for pre-season training with a Champions League qualifier just 40 days away.
From the team that started the final match of the season away to Hibs on May 15 only Vasilis Barkas is expected back with the remainder of the team made up of loan players or internationalists given an extended break. Scott Brown has now left the club.
It was a really disappointing result.
It’s the same for the team and the club, and anyway, we couldn’t play our own soccer from the start of the game, and there were also places where we replaced 9 starting members, and some players who hadn’t appeared in a few weeks have been around for a while. There was also an element that it became a play. In the second half, I was able to make a lot of chances, and there was a scene where I could get a few more points. As we entered the extension, both teams became tired and the game became open, but it was a game in which we could not decide the chance and the development continued to be difficult. At the end, I lost in the form of a penalty shootout. It was a disappointing result, and I think that the result that the opponent did to the last minute led the opponent to victory. Anyway, it was a disappointing match for us.
I feel that I haven’t been able to perform as expected in the first half of recent games. Please tell us how you feel and how to fix it.
Again, I think that the difficulty came out when I changed nine members who hadn’t been out of the start for a couple of weeks. Among them, we couldn’t reach the level of soccer that we always try to play. With the desire to win, there was a match on Sunday, and I replaced nine players to play this match. However, I couldn’t control the game from the start, I couldn’t play what I was trying to do, and as I said earlier in the second half, I made a chance and finally calmed down and had some chances to score points, but in the end Unfortunately, there was a part where the opponent was strongly conscious of trying to win, so unfortunately we think that we did not reach that point.
I changed 4 people in the second half . The match against Sapporo on Sunday is coming up, but was that a change on the assumption?
It’s not a big reason, it makes sense to change it, and there is a reason, so we wanted to have more control over it. I thought that putting them in would put more pressure on me, so I put in those four people.
Was there a plan to change players from the beginning of the second half?
In the first half, it became like that, but in half-time, I told him that he wanted to play simply with the rhythm of play. Some of the starting lineup players have been in the match for a long time, but I believed that they could do it. In the second half, I made a lot of chances, and there was a part that put pressure on the game control part (by taking turns during the game), so there was no place to change from the start.
