Celtic manager not interested in the 'hate' and the 'vindictive' in Rangers rivalry

Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou and Rangers manager Michael Beale embrace after the Parkhead club's 2-1 Viaplay final win that was about meeting internal challenges not getting one over on his club's greatest rival.(Photo by Craig Foy / SNS Group)

In certain respects, Celtic and Ange Postecoglou fit hand in glove.

The obligation to win every game playing ever-better football is the Australian to his fingertips. In other respects, though, the job seems just so not him. Putting Rangers to the sword in the Viaplay Cup final would have provided his club’s supporters more glee and snark than defeating any other opponent at Hampden. The profound, yet petty, enmity between these bitterest of rivals, which begets an utter obsession with each other and ceaseless craving both for supremacy and slaying in their derby domain, has enveloped past managers. The proposition that the 57-year-old would have been motivated to succeed at Hampden by the Ibrox men’s renewed competitiveness under Michael Beale, or as a result of any recent comments emanating from his club’s noisy neighbours, he finds entirely alien, though.

“I get it,” said the Celtic manager. “I don’t think it’s unique to this city, but there is a real fixation on [the belief] you have to hate, and you have to want revenge, and you have to be vindictive. It just doesn’t get my juices going. I get so much more excited by beating teams I think are really good and are managed by managers I respect, who are on the top of their game. That is what gets me going. I don’t need words, or to hate the opposition or the opposition manager, to get motivated. It is not what drives me.

“I have been pretty clear about what is going to motivate this group of players – it is about rising to the challenge of being the best football team you can be on a weekly basis. If you need these extra things to get motivated that is where you fall into the trap. You are going to have off weeks. What happens when somebody doesn’t get you motivated because they haven’t said anything nasty about you. It is just not the way I am wired. That is part of the landscape here. But, for me, I get really motivated by trying to be the best. If I am up against an opponent who I think is good then I am up for that contest.”