Socceroos standards have slipped, Postecoglou warns after Old Firm victory

After guiding Celtic to their first Old Firm derby win under his reign, Ange Postecoglou has warned that Australian football is being left behind by the rest of Asia and that standards have been allowed to slip since he was Socceroos coach.

Postecoglou is the toast of Glasgow – or one half of it, at least – after steering Celtic to a commanding 3-0 win over Rangers on Thursday morning (AEDT), which has put them top of the Scottish Premiership ladder for the first time since he was appointed in June.

Ange Postecoglou celebrates his first Old Firm derby win with Celtic.Credit:Getty

It came barely 24 hours after the Socceroos’ World Cup qualification hopes took an enormous hit in a disappointing 2-2 draw with Oman, and for many Australian fans who are watching Postecoglou’s coaching journey closely, the comparisons were difficult to ignore.

The result is likely to consign Graham Arnold’s men to the intercontinental play-off route, which Postecoglou successfully navigated four years ago – but this time, assuming they can get past the other third-placed team in Group A of AFC qualification, the Socceroos will face the fifth-best team from South America instead of Honduras, the CONCACAF team who Australia beat over two legs to reach Russia 2018.

Postecoglou said he was still keeping a close eye on football in Australia but said the writing had been on the wall for the Socceroos for some time regarding their place in the global pecking order.

“I’m following it, obviously. I’ve got a vested interest, it’s my nation,” he told Melbourne radio station SEN in an interview shortly after the final whistle in Glasgow.

Ange Postecoglou guided the Socceroos to their crowning moment at the 2015 Asian Cup.Credit:AP

“We’ve qualified for the last few World Cups and you want them to do it again. It’s not an easy path, we know that.

“I think from my perspective, the signs have been there for a while that the rest of Asia is improving and we’ve kind of stalled in our development. The four years I had in charge were fantastic for me, we won an Asian Cup, we qualified for a World Cup, and I think we need to maintain those kind of standards.

Celtic recruit Reo Hatate celebrates his second goal with skipper Callum McGregor.Credit:Getty

“We should be disappointed if we don’t go to a World Cup, it’s not about saying ‘well, let’s just miss one so we can learn’ – we’ve done enough learning, our expectation should be to qualify for World Cups all the time.”

The hallmarks of Postecoglou’s Socceroos at their very best were evident in Celtic’s performance in front of 60,000 fans at Parkhead, where the first night-time Old Firm derby in over a decade. It was also their first win over Rangers in more than two years and extended their undefeated streak in the league to 18 matches.

One of Postecoglou’s most recent Japanese signings, Reo Hatate, scored two goals in a scintillating first-half performance while also assisting Liel Abada for Celtic’s third, just before half-time.

“We’ve been building slowly through the year,” he said.

“We lost three of our first six games and in the Scottish Premiership you can’t afford to drop too many. We knew for us to be challenging we had to be almost perfect since then and we have been.

“The players have been dealing with the fact that we’ve got to perform every week and overcome every challenge in front of us. Today was no different, the extra significance was that it’s a game that means a lot to our supporters, and you want to deliver for them as much as anything. It was a special night.”

Postecoglou described the nature of the Old Firm derby to former AFL star Kane Cornes, who was interviewing him on SEN, as “Port Adelaide [versus] Adelaide Crows 1000 times more, mate.”

“It’s pretty intense. It’s because it’s generational, it’s passed on from great-grandparents to their kids, to their kids, to their kids,” he said. “It’s just entrenched in society here, they’re pretty passionate about this football club, it’s more than just a football club to be fair to them. It’s part of their life. When you invest generationally … it means a hell of a lot.”

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