WHILE Ange Postecoglou may well be of the ‘old-school’, he is very much open to modern approaches in football, particularly when it comes to the analytical side of the game. The jargon and the terminology involved though? Not so much.
The Celtic manager’s search for an edge over the opposition has led him to appoint former Benfica analyst Antoine Ortega to his backroom staff, where his task will be to translate what ‘xA’ and ‘xG’ might be able to tell him about his players, his team, or potential targets. And it's probably not before time.
“The one that gets me is XL because that’s all my clothes,” Postecoglou said.
“I’ve got no idea, mate, that’s why I’ve brought Antoine in! The analytics thing is well beyond me. Like you, I went through my schooling with a pen and paper.
“That’s where the future of a lot of scouting and player identification is going. These young guys are much better skilled at - and schooled in - getting the right information, then filtering it and putting it in a form that you and I can understand.
“It’s a massive growth area in football and we’re always looking for bright people who can come in and help us in those areas.”
The decision to appoint Ortega is the latest move in Postecoglou’s overarching mission to modernise the club behind the scenes, and ensure they have a solid foundation to meet the challenges of the future.
“Antoine has already started and there is a lot going on, stuff that doesn’t affect us in the short term so much, but is still important to what we want to build,” he said.
“All that stuff runs concurrently, while the main focus and priority is the game ahead of us, building a team to have success this year.
“It doesn’t stop there. There is other stuff needing to be done around the club, which I said we were going to do – but there was no rush. We had to take our time, find the right people, create an environment that gives us success for many years to come, not just in the short term.
“We’ll continue to make appointments and bring in people we think will help that. Antoine is one, we’ve also brought in Stuart McLaren as 18s coach, someone I know really well.
“All these decisions hopefully create a really good foundation for us moving forward.”
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