This week I have the opportunity to interview South Melbourne Hall of fame legend and three time premiership coach Ange Postecoglou who comes to Melbourne with his all conquering Brisbane Roar. On Saturday night he will lock horns with former team mate and fellow South Melbourne hall of famer Mehmet Durakovic and his side the Melbourne Victory.

We were very fortunate that Ange to took time out of his busy schedule to give us an extensive interview before Saturday night’s blockbuster game:

NK: Ange, welcome home to Melbourne this weekend. Your last defeat was on 11 September 2010, in Week 6 of last season. Since then, you’ve played 32 games, for 21 wins and 11 draws. In that time Roar has scored 75 goals scored, and 28 conceded – and picked up both the Championship and Premiership.

It’s been a phenomenal run, how hard has it been to keep up this momentum?

AP: Oh yeah, it hasn’t been too hard because from our point of view we have not been focusing on the result but more on the way we are playing, the performance rather than the result, and that takes away the pressure a little bit. We try and play better than the week before and the results take care of themselves. Players have been good at focusing on that and obviously they are growing more confident with the positive results every week … momentum is built from that. The players believe in what we do and I make sure they focus on the right things.

NK: You rebuilt the team in your first off-season, and this season you’ve had to replace a number of key players – and everyone you sign seems to be working out perfectly. What are you doing differently to the rest of the league?

AP: I can’t comment on what the rest of the league is doing but from our point of view we have a clear plan and vision of what we want. We are very selective of the type of players and people we bring in to the club. Recruiting is never foolproof … there is an element of risk involved, but we have our criteria of what we look for and this has been serving us well of late.

NK: The system you use was clearly a tremendous success last season, in the off season we were expecting other clubs to bridge the gap after studying your team. Do you find that other clubs are trying to recreate what you are doing?

AP: This is something you can’t control but one thing we wanted to do was work really hard in the off season to improve on last year and our mind-set was: if other teams were trying to improve from last year we had to come out and improve and get better. I am sure other teams would have got encouragement if they saw we hadn’t [improved]. We work on the premise that the other teams would be trying to get close to us and that we had to get better to keep ahead. The will to improve, the motivation to become better is what keeps teams ahead.

NK: The fitness and conditioning of the Roar has been outstanding, you always seem to outrun your opposition and the concentration and mental discipline of the side is switched on for the whole 90 minutes. Are you using the same conditioning system used by Guus Hiddink which has become well known throughout the football industry?

AP: People tend to emphasise our fitness because we finish games very strong but the essence of our game is to have the ball and you actually do less running when you have the ball than when you are chasing it. We work hard at training, for sure, but the fitness part of our game in training is based on playing. During preseason we worked on our game plan more than running without the ball and you will find that we finish stronger than our opposition because we generally do less running in the 90 minutes. That’s a key element of what we do.

NK: Was it the perfect match last week in all your years of coaching? You have been coaching for some time now. Was that pretty close to the perfect Postecoglou performance? 7-1 against Adelaide United.

AP: It was probably one of my most satisfying games as coach. We hadn’t conceded a goal all year and the first goal of the game we conceded and people questioned how we were going to react falling behind … the players responded magnificently. They played some fantastic football, particularly in the first half, the way we played … there has not been many games I have been involved in that my team has been that comprehensive against a very good team who are expected to challenge for the title. We were playing some strong opposition. We did everything right on the night. It was a pretty complete performance by the players, I could not fault the way they went about things.

NK: Going back to the Grand Final last year, you had done everything right all season, you were by far the best team both in style and results yet five minutes to go and 2-0 down your dream was close to collapsing: how did you feel when it seemed like it was all going to be taken away from you?

AP: From my point of view you stay focused on the game and you don’t have a chance to think about the overall result and what it all means. I still felt we were in the game even though it looked like a tough task. We were concentrating on trying to get one goal and we knew Central Coast would get nervous. The game was going so fast you don’t have time to think about the ramifications of losing.

NK: Brisbane is obviously a different city to Melbourne. Are they embracing this record breaking champion team that is playing some of the best football seen in this country?

AP: We are making inroads but we are not getting the recognition we deserve. It’s a different environment up here and the club has been through some tough times and alienated some supporters in the past and we are trying to get them back. This is a once in a generation run and not many supporters can say they have seen their team not witness a defeat for x amount of games and I think the players themselves deserve more recognition but all we can do is concentrate on what we are doing. We are heading in the right direction.

NK: Post your tenure as the National youth coach you were in Greece briefly before coming home. For a while there were not many opportunities presenting themselves in the A-League. Did you start questioning whether you would ever get another opportunity?

AP: I had no doubt in my mind I was going to keep coaching, it was just a matter of an opportunity. I had a couple of discussions with A League clubs but things didn’t work out but I was always confident. I was prepared to wait a little while and if things didn’t eventuate I was prepared to go back overseas, but the Brisbane Roar opportunity came up at the right time and it was the right club for me. I needed to do things my way without interference and once that happened things worked out. They understood from the very start that I had to be empowered to do things my way otherwise what was the point? If they wanted something different then they shouldn’t appoint me. They understood what I was about and what I wanted to do and they let me do my job.

NK: How does this team compare to the South Melbourne back-to-back premiership sides of the late 90s which had players like Trimboli, Damianos, Lozanovski, Petkovic, Anastasiadis, De Amicis to name a few.

AP: I get asked that question a lot. We had a fantastic side at South Melbourne and I was very proud of our achievements as a club. The difference now is I am working with the players full time and we are a fully professional set up. This allows me and the coaching staff to improve the team and individuals on a daily basis which was pretty tough in the NSL’s part-time days. I think that particular side is right up there with the Melbourne Knights team and a couple of the Adelaide City teams of that era. In comparison to the team we have today I really believe the football we are playing has not been played before in this country and a lot of that is due to the full time environment.

NK: There has been speculation this week about interest in Japan, which is a testament to what you have achieved in the last one and a half years. It is expected that there may be some interest overseas, what do you think about that?

AP: I have been lucky in my career in that I coached arguably the biggest team in the land at the time in South Melbourne, and then I had 7 years with the junior national teams before getting this job. I just keep working as hard as I can to the best of my ability. In 3 to 4 years time who knows? I am very ambitious and wherever I coach I want to be successful. We will see what happens in the future but at the moment I want to finish what I have started at the Roar and achieve things that have not been achieved before, this is what excites me and this is what I am focusing on. I don’t put any limits to where I can go and it’s the same thing I say to the players, you don’t know where this game will take you. People say it will be tough for an Australian to coach in Europe but I don’t see it that way. There are possibilities to do what you want all the time; you just have to keep working hard at being successful. Who would have thought back in 2000 that I would take South Melbourne to play Manchester United at the Maracana, but that’s what happens when you are successful: the game gives you opportunities. I don’t put any limits on what I can do in the future.

NK: How is your fellow South Melbourne hall of famer Paul Trimboli settling in Brisbane as the Football Director?

AP: He has settled down well and he has helped me enormously allowing me to concentrate just on coaching. He is the kind of guy you want around a club; he has the right values as a person. He pretty much played for just the one club for so many years which shows his loyalty, he is a very loyal guy and this is the kind of person I want in our organisation. He is working hard but he is enjoying it.

NK: This week you have Melbourne Victory, the biggest club in Australia in terms of supporters and they have some massive names in their list. Are you looking forward to coming back to your home city and taking them on in front of a potentially huge crowd.

AP: We are looking forward to it, me and the players. It’s one of the games you always look forward to because you know they will bring a big crowd. Melbourne Victory are a big club with a big supporter base and we respect that. We can’t wait for Saturday night, both teams have some outstanding attacking weapons and I am sure there will be goals. It’s one of the highlights of the year for me coming home.

NK: You may be aware you are very close to the all time Australian sporting record in any code for succession of matches without defeat, which goes back to Eastern Suburbs in the Rugby League in the 30s. This is an amazing statistic, an 80 year old record. You are on the verge of history?

AP: We are concentrating on our job at hand but there is no doubt if we are fortunate enough to equal or break the record, we’ll be able to reflect back on a once-in-a-life-time accomplishment that is unlikely to be broken again.

NK: All the best Ange for Saturday night and for the rest of the year. We here at Neos Kosmos are very proud of what you are doing both for yourself, your team and for Australian football.