Ange Postecoglou’s voyage to a different world gives Daniel Levy something to ponder

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Ange Postecoglou has recently started talking about the “parallel worlds” his Tottenham Hotspur side are trying to traverse this season.

One is the world of a historically bad league season for Spurs, the world of 19 defeats in the 35 games played so far, still in with a chance of breaking their record from within a 38-match league season, a record that has stood since before the First World War. It is the world of losing to newly-promoted and relegation-bound duo Ipswich Town and Leicester City at home, the world of being 2-0 up away at Brighton & Hove Albion and at home against Chelsea and losing both matches. The world of conceding six at home to Liverpool and five in the reverse fixture.

It is a miserable world, one that has sapped the joy and the fun out of anyone who has been in it. It is also an acrimonious world, one where Postecoglou gets barracked by Spurs fans at Bournemouth, and cups his ear to them at Stamford Bridge. It is, above all, a meaningless world, one where no league game since February has meant anything at all. Spurs’ most recent top-flight outing — a 1-1 draw at West Ham United last Sunday — was one of the most pointless matches of football you will ever see. Tottenham still have three more league fixtures to fulfil this month before it is all mercifully over until August.

But the other world, the world of their Europa League campaign, is a world of glory and purpose and joy.

It is the world of winning at Ferencvaros and Hoffenheim. It is the world of staring down the barrel at AZ and then playing them off the park at home. Of going to Eintracht Frankfurt, needing to win, and grinding out the most professional, disciplined performance they have ever given under Postecoglou. Of facing Bodo/Glimt, Europe’s leading giant-killers, barely giving them a sniff over two legs and winning 5-1 on aggregate to reach the final.

In that world, Spurs look organised, ruthless, unified and clinical.

Dominic Solanke celebrates his goal at Bodo/Glimt (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

This is a world which reminds you what football is meant to feel like. It is a world where Tottenham are on a quest, aiming for their first European trophy in 41 years. It is a world where every time Spurs face a challenge, not least the endless injuries, and look like they are about to get knocked off that tightrope, they find the answer and keep moving forward. This is the world in which tens of thousands of their fans will head to Bilbao for that final against Manchester United, hoping to see Postecoglou’s team make history.

This season has felt like reading a piece of metafiction. These two narrative stories — each one taking place in a different world — have unfolded simultaneously. But the catch is that these two stories cannot both be happening at the same time. The truth of one excludes the other. And the narrative power of this season, the thing that keeps you reading, is the lure of finding out which one of them is true. Which one of these two narrators is reliable? Which one of these two worlds is real?

There have been plenty of moments this season when it felt as if the world of European success was the unsustainable one, that the story would be cut off soon enough. And that only the world of Premier League failure would survive. If Spurs had been knocked out by AZ, Frankfurt or Glimt, that would have been the case.

But the fact they have made it to the final means that this story will at least get a final chapter. And if Spurs can win that game — just one game, against a team they have beaten three times this season already — then nobody will be able to dispute the overpowering truth of the happier world, the happier narrative. The fantastical story will turn out to be the real one.

This raises a possibility that not many people have reckoned with recently. If the true story of this season is the one where Postecoglou makes positive history for Tottenham in Europe, then what does that mean for the story in which he is to blame for their disastrous league campaign?

Maybe that story will turn out to be unreliably narrated, the one that gives us the incomplete picture. Maybe those 19 league defeats will be viewed differently if they are weighed against a European trophy. What if this painful league season was a price that had to be paid as a thin squad battled an injury crisis in pursuit of glory?

Micky van de Ven celebrates during Spurs’ midweek win in Norway (David Lidstrom/Getty Images)

And if this is the narrative that wins out — that this was a glorious season that just went wrong at the weekends — then what does that mean for the summer? If you believe in the world where Postecoglou is a genius, does it still make sense to tear everything up and start again?

But if Tottenham beat United on Wednesday week, this is exactly the dilemma Daniel Levy and the other senior power brokers at the club will have to face. Would they still aim for a change of manager in the summer? Or would they decide to give Postecoglou a third season? There would certainly be a strong emotional case to keep him.

And yet it still feels — right now at least — that the likeliest outcome even after lifting the trophy would be a handshake, a parting of ways, ‘Thank you, Ange’ and all the rest. Presented the right way, it could still be consistent with a narrative of Postecoglou’s triumph.

Remember that, six years ago, Mauricio Pochettino’s dream was to win the Champions League and then walk off into the sunset, knowing there was no way he could ever better that achievement with Spurs. Pochettino never recovered the same optimism or energy during his final six months at the club before he was eventually dismissed.

If Postecoglou can win this all-English European final in Spain, doing what Pochettino’s side could not, it might still make sense for him to follow the same path.

When better to leave than right after securing your place in the club’s history? It would be the ultimate coda, the climax to the book, the triumph of the narrative that is only now starting to feel real.

(Top photo: Mata Torbergsen/Getty Images)

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