Dominic McKay is convinced Celtic have hired a winner in Ange Postecoglou and that the new head coach is a kindred spirit in that regard.
The Greek-born Australia was confirmed as the club’s new manager this morning after signing a 12-month rolling contract at Celtic Park.
His priority will be wrestling the Scottish Premiership title back from rivals Rangers next season, and incoming chief executive McKay revealed that Postecoglou’s winning mentality and enthusiasm for the Hoops is what shone through most brightly in discussions.
He told Celtic TV: “I’m delighted that we’ve managed to secure Ange as the new manager of Celtic Football Club. Ange is an outstanding leader and an outstanding manager.
“In all my discussions with him to date, I’ve been really impressed by his enthusiasm for Celtic, his keenness to work with me to help modernise and develop the footballing and non-footballing structures to make sure that we’re the successful club we need to be for the generation ahead.
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“His experience at the international level, having taken Australia to World Cups is hugely impressive and his experience of winning both in Australia and in Japan is massively impressive.
“So I’m really excited about securing a winner and securing someone who wants to drive the club forward in a way I think everyone will be really proud about.
“We have a shared vision and that was really important to me, to make sure we had a new manager who bought into the modernising, the evolution and development of the club, both on and off the field.
“In terms of his style of play, I think he will excite the fans and in terms of communication I think he’ll be great in engaging with the supporters. And in terms of his philosophy, which is important, is borne out of winning competitions. I want to be a winner and I'm delighted that we’ve managed to secure Ange.”
As for when Postecoglou might be in the country and able to meet his players at Lennoxtown, McKay couldn’t give a definitive answer but explained that work was being done to ensure it is sooner rather than later.
He added: “We’ve got the challenges of the Covid which everyone is dealing with but as soon as we possibly can get Ange into the country, he’s keen to meet up with the team and start rebuilding the squad for the seasons ahead.
“So it’ll be a little bit of time yet but rest assured people are moving heaven and earth to get him here as quickly as we can.
“Like all high performance environments, you need to evolve - whether that’s on the football side or the academy side or the business side. That’s my mission, to make sure we start evolving all the areas we need to evolve and build on the solid platform to make sure this club is as successful as it deserves to be.”
