12 Nov How Manchester City friendly inspired Postecoglou’s vision for Yokohama

Ange Postecoglou says Yokohama F. Marinos’ performance against Manchester City in a pre-season friendly gave his side renewed belief in the style he was looking to implement.

Postecoglou came up against a City side coached by Pep Guardiola, a manager who shares a similar footballing philosophy with the former Socceroos coach.

While the J-League side fell to a 3-1 loss, Postecoglou’s tactics drew praise from Guardiola after they out-possessed the reigning Premier League champions.

"Yokohama played some incredible football and they were an incredible test for us,” Guardiola said post-game.

Postecoglou says the display was the catalyst behind Yokohama’s stunning title charge.

“While it was a friendly, I said to our players: ‘Every week we have more shots than the opposition on goal, every week we try and score more goals than the opposition. We’re going to play a team that that is what their philosophy is – and they are the very best at it’,” he told SEN’s Whateley.

“So I said: ‘Forget winning the game, let’s see if we can have more of the ball, we can have more shots on goal and beat them at their own game’, I set them that task.

“We lost 3-1 and they’ve got some quality in their team, but when we looked at those measures, we knocked them off.

“If they had any doubts about themselves, they all of sudden said: ‘If we can do this against the very best, there’s no other team that can stop us in terms of executing this football’ … that’s where they got the belief.

“When you’re playing against Raheem Sterling, Kevin De Bruyne and these types of players and we’re keeping the ball, it’s just an amazing confidence booster.”

Pushing for a first league title since 2004, Yokohama sit one point behind FC Tokyo with three games left.

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Listen to Ange Postecoglou’s chat on SEN’s Whateley in the player below