The insult Ange couldn't cop in ‘disaster' showdown with Fergie's Manchester United
Ange Postecoglou's South Melbourne Hellas side trained before Manchester United at the Maracana on the eve of playing one another in the inaugural FIFA Club World Championship of 2000.
As superstars like David Beckham and Roy Keane arrived on the fabled pitch in Brazil, the South Melbourne players fawned, more like fans than opponents.
Postecoglou was filthy.
'Ange said, 'Get the f*** out of here. Go inside'. He took it as an insult,' Elias Donoudis, there covering the tournament for Greek newspaper Neos Kosmos, said in the Postecoglou biography Angeball.
South Melbourne's involvement in that tournament, and Ange's refusal to play the pitiable underdog, was a remarkable early chapter in the Postecoglou story.
Having taken an unfancied team to one of football's great cathedrals to play the biggest club in the world, the Australian manager walked away knowing that anything was possible.
'I stared down the beast,' he told the ABC in 2015, the same year he led the Socceroos to Asian Cup glory. 'After that, I had nothing to fear.'
South Melbourne's path to the tournament was rather more humble, coming via the 1999 OFC Club Championship in Fiji.
The back-to-back NSL champions beat Malaita Eagles of the Solomon Islands (2-1) and Konica FC of American Samoa (10-0) in Group A, then breezed by AS Venus of Tahiti 3-0 in the semi-finals.
Local hope Nadi was beaten 5-1 in the final, thanks to goals from Steve Iosifidis, David Clarkson, Michael Curcija, Vaughan Coveny and Steve Panopoulos. It was a tougher game than the scoreline indicated.
'Just to qualify for the tournament was surreal,' Hellas winger Goran Lozanovski said, per Football Nation Radio.
'We had to play this local Fijian side to qualify and it was the toughest game we had played in. The grass was thick and there were toads jumping on the ground.
'But we wanted that win badly because we knew what the end result would be.'
Afterwards, the players sang Peter Allen's I go to Rio in their dressing room. Qualification for the Club World Championship meant the trip of a lifetime, plus a $4 million participation windfall for South Melbourne.
And for Postecoglou, it was about respect after Hellas' championships were given limited recognition within Australian football, let alone the broader public.
'When are we going to get the recognition we deserve, because this team has been on top for two years,' he told reporters before attending the draw.
'I am flying to Brazil tomorrow because we are one of the eight teams in the world playing in this world club competition. This tournament is the most important thing in club football in this country for years, if ever, and these young men are setting new standards out there, but they don't get the recognition.'
They were drawn in Group B against United, fresh from their iconic 1999 treble, plus a hometown Vasco da Gama side boasting Romario, and Mexican club Necaxa; the South American and North American continental champions respectively.
Real Madrid (UEFA), Al-Nassr (AFC) and Raja Casablanca (CAF) were in Group A along with Corinthians, the host and reigning Brazilian champion.
Far from the delirium of the Aussies, United were there under duress and had to forfeit their FA Cup defence in the name of currying favour (in vain) with FIFA.
'It turned out to be a disaster for us,' manager Sir Alex Ferguson told club magazine Inside United.
'We did it to help England's World Cup bid and that was the political situation.
'I regretted it because we got nothing but stick and terrible criticism for not being in the FA Cup when really, it wasn't our fault at all.
'The Football Association and the government felt that playing in this tournament would help England's bid to host the 2006 World Cup.
'There was a lot of undue criticism — but it was a great two-week break.'
Nearly everyone of note in England gave their two pence, accusing United of 'disrespecting' or even 'killing' the FA Cup.
'If they don't play this year, they should never play again,' cricket great Ian Botham declared.
Beckham also remembers the misgivings over United's participation.
'To be honest, it was something we talked about in the dressing room as much as everyone else did outside Old Trafford,' Beckham wrote in Inside United.
'We were looking forward to going to Brazil, looking forward to playing clubs from all over the world. But nobody was happy about missing out on the FA Cup.
'It didn't feel right not to defend the trophy. Perhaps we could have been given a bye through to the fourth round while we were away and joined when we came back, I don't know. That was for the FA and the club to sort out.'
But an experience that was trifling to United's highly-paid stars was unforgettable for the South Melbourne boys.
They travelled business class, took a large entourage of family and friends, dined with controversial FIFA president Sepp Blatter and stayed in a glitzy mountaintop hotel in Rio.
'We were like kings. We couldn't believe it,' striker John Anastasiadis said in Angeball.
Postecoglou's side was decent but also outmatched.
Their opening game against Vasco da Gama drew 66,000 people to the Maracana and they were in full voice as South Melbourne sat terrified in their dressing room, where the ceiling was visibly shaking.
'We're pretty much sh**ting ourselves,' Hellas defender Steve Iosifidis recalled in Angeball.
Postecoglou played the Hunters and Collectors anthem Holy Grail to snap them out of it.
In a manner that would later become world famous, he told them to be proud and enjoy the game.
Still, the semi-pros of South Melbourne were facing Brazilian heroes who had graced their bedroom walls.
'We were ready to go to war,' Iosifidis said. 'As soon as we walked out there though, reality hit, mate. It was pretty funny.
'One of my best mates at the time was Steve Panopoulos, and I remember we were setting up for a corner. He goes to me, 'You mark Romario, I'll mark Edmundo'. I looked away and then I glanced back at him and said, 'You realise, we're from the suburbs? And all of a sudden we're marking these world-class players?'
'I had a poster of Romario on my bedroom wall. It was so surreal.'
South Melbourne held firm for nearly an hour and Vasco da Gama's fans booed their side off at halftime. They eventually beat the Aussie underdogs 2-0.
United, meanwhile had drawn 1-1 beforehand against Necaxa, with Australian goalkeeper Mark Bosnich between the posts.
Bozza wasn't happy when Beckham was sent off for a high challenge on Jose Milian, claiming the opposition player had feigned injury to get the megastar dismissed.
'It was pathetic from the Mexican player,' Bosnich said.
United were already on the back foot and their campaign went to hell with a 3-1 loss to Vasco da Gama, in which Romario scored a brace.
Hellas, meanwhile, got a flash of glory in their match against Necaxa. Anastasiadis walked on to the Maracana with a simple pre-game message from Postecoglou: 'Go out and score today.'
He did.
'When I scored, I pointed to him. It was an unbelievable moment, to see your name on the Maracana scoreboard,' Anastasiadis said in Angeball.
It was a 3-1 loss for South Melbourne and with the top team of each group progressing to the final, both Hellas and United were out of contention before playing their last match.
Ferguson was by then clutching for niceties.
'It's been fantastic here – what a chance for us to come out and get some sun,' he told the BBC.
'Back home we would have been freezing our toes off. Playing in the Maracana stadium – that's an experience that probably 90 per cent of the top players in the world don't get.
'It's been well organised, the Brazilian people have looked after us very well. On the playing side, we wish we had been better.'
Criticism of the Red Devils' presence in Rio reached fever pitch back in England as the Hellas showdown approached.
The Daily Mirror branded it 'the most meaningless football game in history … the result is irrelevant, as neither team can make the final of this absurd tournament anyway. Nobody will turn up to watch it, nobody will tune in to see it and nobody cares what happens.'
Yet for Postecoglou, it was invaluable. He got to spend about 15 minutes with Ferguson.
'He was kind with his time when he didn't have to be, and there are plenty I've come across that aren't kind with their time,' Postecoglou told Football.London.
'That leaves an impression on you as well, because you go, 'I don't want to be like that'. You realise that and think, I don't want anyone to think that about me. So the fact that he spent 10, 15 minutes talking to a young manager, I was 34 at the time, it was significant.
'We were walking to a press conference, and he said, 'You're never going to like this stuff, I hate it'.
'So I hung on his every word, but more important was the impression he made on me that if you can do that to a person, that person then leaves thinking or feeling like you've given them that time of day, and that has an unbelievable effect, because you're not just representing yourself.
'He's representing his football club at the time and all these other things. So yeah, those kinds of things leave a mark on you.'
Ferguson wasn't so generous as to field a full-strength team, with his tournament effectively over.
Jonathan Greening, Danny Higginbotham and Ronnie Wallwork were a few of the names on the team sheet for a fixture that United's yearbook later deemed to have 'an unmistakeable aura of anticlimax'. The game drew 25,000 fans, allegedly.
Yet it was a big moment for Postecoglou and an early nod to his philosophy.
He refused to be conservative and though Hellas fell to 2-0 via a Quinton Fortune brace inside 20 minutes, his side played attacking football throughout and created chances.
Coveny and Curcija very nearly scored in the second half. Coveny lobbed United goalkeeper Raimond van der Gouw, only for his shot to inexplicably hit both posts.
Ferguson noticed.
'He said to me that we did very well,' Postecoglou said, per the Herald Sun. 'He also said, 'I bet you I get a question about Beckham, even though he was only on for 14 minutes'.'
Having given a good account of themselves, South Melbourne's players marched to the United dressing room to swap jerseys.
They weren't met entirely well by the big-money stars, until hard-nosed captain Roy Keane told them to pull their heads in.
'There was a bit of sarcasm from the United players when we came in,' Lozanovski said.
'Would you believe Ole [Gunnar Solskjaer] and Andy Cole were giggling, going, 'Look at these amateurs'.
'But Roy Keane walks in and really put them in their place, telling them to be respectful. I have the utmost respect for Roy, he was a complete gentleman.'
Panopoulos got Beckham's jersey. Becks and his United teammates were by then sick of their Brazilian holiday.
The tournament ended with a scoreless draw between Vasco da Gama and Corinthians; Vasco da Gama won 4-3 on penalties to become the inaugural champion.
'I couldn't wait to get back to some mud, wind and rain, to get on with the rest of the season,' Beckham said.
'We might not have had the FA Cup to look forward to but while we'd been away, no other team had been able to catch up: the premiership was there to be won.'
And it was. United defended their Premier League crown in a canter, despite being second at the turn of the new year, finishing 18 points ahead of Arsenal.
South Melbourne, meanwhile, weren't able to go on to a hat-trick of NSL titles. Postecoglou remembers the season being a write-off around the excitement of the Brazil adventure.
'There was a fair bit of prize money at stake for a club like ours,' Postecoglou said earlier this year ahead of an FA Cup clash against Tamworth.
'Qualifying for that tournament probably destroyed our domestic season because from the moment we qualified our players just didn't want to risk getting injured and were just not interested in our league season. We had a disaster that season, they just didn't want to miss out on playing.
'We ended up losing 2-0 on the day [against Manchester United] but we gave a decent account of ourselves considering the difference.
'Some of my players, who were semi-pro but good footballers, probably played the games of their lives that day.'
And Postecoglou tasted the big time. So began his remarkable ascent in the world game.
It was incredible symmetry that his finest moment in club football came against United, 25 years later, when he led Tottenham Hotspur past the Red Devils in the Europa League final.
Ferguson was there watching.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
AFLW star Tilly Lucas-Rodd ‘so happy' after gender-affirming top surgery
AFLW star Tilly Lucas-Rodd has revealed they are 'so happy' and feel so much like themselves after having gender-affirming top surgery during the off-season. The 29-year-old Hawthorn star is the league's first current player to undergo the surgery - which removes breast tissue in a similar way to a double mastectomy - and said they feel so much more comfortable. 'People often have asked me, 'How do I feel now that I've had it' - post-surgery, seeing myself,' Lucas-Rodd, who identifies as non-binary, told ABC Sport. '... for me, it was like, 'this is how I've always looked when I saw myself' … This is what I've always thought and always seen internally.' Prior to the surgery, Lucas-Rodd was taping or binding their chest and wearing a guernsey multiple sizes too large in order to reduce dysphoria. This practice however, was causing issues, sometimes restricting breathing and movement, and creating back pain. Since returning to training, however, Lucas-Rodd said they are relishing the freedom of not needing a sports bra or chest bindings. 'Going out onto the track in our training guernseys or our singlets, I just feel so, so happy and so just like me,' they said. 'I had huge discomfort around my chest, huge dysphoria. It didn't match up with what I felt internally I should look like.' The halfback came out publicly as non-binary in 2023, saying at the time that they 'don't really identify strongly as my assigned gender at birth, which is female.' 'I don't really feel strongly that I fit into that label as a female, and at the same time I don't feel like I'm a male, either. I guess I'm in between that,' they said in a video shared on the Hawthorn website. 'So for me, the label 'non-binary' feels most comfortable about how I identify in terms of my gender.' Two other AFLW players, Carlton star Darcy Vescio and former Gold Coast player Tori Groves-Little, also identify as non-binary, and two former players have undergone gender-reaffirming top surgery since leaving the league. Lucas-Rodd spoke to their Hawthorn teammates about the surgery when returning to training and said they were met with 'such love and acceptance'. While opening themselves up to public commentary by sharing their story has been nerve-racking, Lucas-Rodd said they hope to help others in a similar position. 'It's also to show gender diverse and trans people that there is a place for them in sport,' they said. 'Coming out publicly with top surgery, people will say and do what they want, but I'm trying to show people that no matter what gender you are, no matter how you express that, no matter anything about you, that you belong in sport and you belong in sport at a professional and elite level. 'That's a big thing for me … being like regardless of your gender and how you express that, there is this place for you in sport.' Since sharing their ABC Sport interview on Instagram, Lucas-Rodd has recieved many messages of support, including from Aussie musician G Flip who said, 'Hells yeah Tilly,' and Wentworth star Zoe Terakes, who shared a series of strong arm and love heart emojis.
News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
'He would know' – Respect for Paddy 350
AFL: Despite a poor performance for Geelong, superstar Patrick Dangerfield still received an incredible moment of respect when he left the field after his side's loss to the Lions.
News.com.au
2 hours ago
- News.com.au
Super Netball Round 11 results: West Coast Fever 68-63 winners over Adelaide Thunderbirds
West Coast Fever's challenge for the minor premiership continues after crushing the finals hopes of the Adelaide Thunderbirds. The 68-63 match, in front of a voracious Perth crowd, is Fever's ninth win on the trot and has rocketed them up the ladder to second spot. It also equalled the record for winning the most consecutive Super Netball games. Despite the victory, the close scoreline did little to improve Fever's goal percentage which is all that is standing between them and the top spot. The Adelaide Thunderbirds will now need to rely on other results to stoke their dying hopes of limping into fourth position and a third consecutive tilt at the title. As predicted, war was waged at each end of the court as the teams' respective Jamaicans battled for supremacy. For the Fever, goal shoot Jhaniele Fowler-Nembhard and defender Kadie-Ann Dehaney had near instantaneous impact. Dehaney, who is in career best form, got hand to ball early and had national teammate Romelda Aiken-George looking uncomfortable on the shot. Two early misses, and a few retaliatory elbows signalled the frustration from Aiken-George who eventually steadied her emotions to net 41/47. Speaking about Aiken-George's overall performance, Thunderbirds coach Tania Obst praised her leadership: 'She is such a target for us. Loz [Lauren Frew] is learning so much from her. I think she enjoys the battle against her fellow Jamaicans and she was a real competitor again tonight for us.' As Fowler-Nembhard continued to dominate, off the back of great ball service from match MVP Alice Teague-Neeld, Thunderbirds's coach Tania Obst constantly rotated her troops in search of a winning formula. Latanya Wilson, who collected eight gains last week, was a menacing presence but could only finish with two gains for her side. Sensing the Thunderbirds were building momentum off the back of Lauren Frew's supershot ability, Fever rang in the changes adding more defence to the middle. It did little to slow the visitors as they won the third 19-15, locking the scores at 51-a-piece heading into the final term. With the Thunderbirds battling to return to the top four, and Fever looking tired after four of their past five matches on the road, both sides fought desperately for every pass in a torrid final quarter battle. As Fever pushed the scoreline out, Frew's earlier hot hand went cold, allowing the home side to run home five goal winners. Back to back Suncorp Super Shots from Lauren Frew keeps the Thunderbirds within touching distance! Watch every game live on Kayo Sports, Foxtel and Binge. — Suncorp Super Netball (@SuperNetball) June 20, 2025 Fever coach Dan Ryan said he thought his side was gone heading into the final term. 'It was a battle and a half. They never really let us get into any flow or gear. At times we were our worst nightmare. Then it quickly turned. It was all over the shop,' he said. DOGGED DEFENCE Thunderbirds defender Latanya Wilson is well and truly stepping out of Shamera Sterling-Humphrey's shadow. The Jamaican duo has ruled the defensive stats for a number of years but with Sterling-Humphrey now on maternity leave, Wilson is proving that she is just as formidable on her own. The 188cm defender leads the league in deflections (with 69 - 14 ahead of the second place holder) and intercepts (28 - ahead by 11). Her turnovers are also impressively low (eight) for someone who has played all but three minutes of the season so far. AIRTIME 🦅 Watch every game live on Kayo Sports, Foxtel and Binge. — Suncorp Super Netball (@SuperNetball) June 20, 2025 DIAMONDS WATCH Fever's Alice Teague-Neeld has been in sparkling form this season. The 28-year-old leads the league for goal assists (with 211, four more than Diamonds captain Liz Watson) and is second place, behind Watson, for feeds (331) and centre pass receives (203). She was in similarly great form last season and was an invitee to the end-of-year Diamonds camp. Surely, with two years of consistently reliable form, she would again be on the selectors' radars. A VIEW FOR WOMEN'S SPORT Netball Australia and Whoopi Goldberg's All Women's Sport Network (AWSN) have entered into a multi-year deal to bring Suncorp Super Netball into 900 million homes worldwide. The partnership will see 41 matches (including finals) made available to AWSN audiences through to the end of 2027.
