“There’s a couple of things,” he said when asked to expand on why he thought football would never ‘take off’ in Australia.

Loading

“One of them is obviously the sporting landscape, where there’s some pretty strong codes there that have generationally dominated the landscape. There’s Aussie Rules, that’s the indigenous sport of Australia, it’s kind of unique to them, and they take great pride in protecting that as their code. The rugby codes, obviously, dominate. It’s very hard for football to make an impact in that space.

“And the flipside of that is just how global the sport of football is. If you want to make inroads when you’re battling those kind of odds, it becomes almost insurmountable. You can’t make the necessary steps. If I can compare that to a country like Japan, who also have the tyranny of distance, baseball’s pretty strong - but they’ve ploughed a lot of resources into football and you can see that that’s making an impact. I don’t see Australia going down that road.”

His view has not changed despite the roaring success of the Women’s World Cup in July and August.

“I just don’t see it. I don’t think it registers,” Postecoglou said. “When you look at what the Matildas did at the World Cup - unbelievable. But you still won’t see an influx of resources to the game. You won’t. I guarantee it. They’ll build stadiums and other codes will use them.

Loading

“I just don’t think the nation as a whole has that inside them to understand that you can make an impact on the world of football, but it requires a kind of nationalistic approach that I just don’t think Australians at their core are really interested in.”

While there is little doubt Postecoglou’s success in club soccer in Japan, Scotland and now England is changing how Australian coaches are perceived abroad, and should open doors for others, he is unsure if his own achievements will affect the bigger picture as he sees it.

He said he had no regrets over his departure from the Socceroos: “It was the right decision for me, it was the right decision for where I saw the next stage of my career, and if I didn’t make that decision at that time, if I had waited until after the World Cup, I’ve got no doubt I wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

Postecoglou was even asked if he would consider coaching England one day, to which his response was: “Oh, come on mate.”

News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.