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George Vasilopoulos made a lot of big decisions as president of South Melbourne Hellas – from bringing the great Ferenc Puskás to the club as coach, to negotiating the construction of Lakeside Stadium with Victoria’s then-Premier Jeff Kennett when Melbourne stole the Australian F1 Grand Prix from Adelaide, to helping shape the future of Australian soccer during his time as a board member of the national federation.

But his biggest decision was the one he didn’t make – and the one Daniel Levy couldn’t resist.

Five games into the 1996-97 National Soccer League season – Ange Postecoglou’s first in charge of South Melbourne – they were bottom of the ladder, without a win. “Bottom last,” as Vasilopoulos says. It was the sort of form that no coach would survive at Hellas, who were then regarded as Australia’s premier club – and under the previous president, Sam Papasavas, it was usually Vasilopolous who would have to deliver the news to those in the firing line.

“Sam used to send me and the secretary to the airport to say [to the coach], ‘Please don’t come on Tuesday.’ We’d sack him at the airport, before he comes back to the dressing room,” he recalls.

Postecoglou, aged just 30 at the time, was a controversial appointment to begin with – but one that Vasilopoulos deeply believed in, despite the prevailing view around the club that it was a gamble gone predictably wrong.

It was a view that even Postecoglou himself seemed to share.

After losing 2-1 away to Adelaide City – their fifth game without success – Vasilopoulos remembers going into South Melbourne’s dressing room at Hindmarsh Stadium and closing the door behind him.

“Ange got very emotional,” he says. “I looked at him. ‘Ange, what’s happening?’ He said, ‘Well, pres ... maybe this wasn’t meant to be for me.’ These are his words, not mine.

“I stopped a little bit, because I could see he was serious. I said, ‘Ange, promise me one thing. Don’t say anything after we leave here to a reporter, to the players, or anyone on the committee – because you won’t be able to take it back, Ange. What you told me now, if you say it to anybody else, you won’t be able to take it back.’”

Ange Postecoglou in his early days at South Melbourne.Credit: The Age

Senior players had already told Vasilopoulos that Postecoglou wasn’t the problem. If anything, the team was trying too hard for him, they said.

The next day, there was a board meeting planned. Vasilopoulos’ vice-president, Bill Georgantis, gave him a call to tell him the other directors had gathered enough signatures to have Postecoglou sacked. They had the numbers. The longer Ange was in the job, the worse off they thought club would be.

“I was tired,” Vasilopoulos said. “But I had this inside information. I said to my wife: ‘Can you ring the secretary? Tell him George won’t be coming, he’s not feeling well today.’”

With no president, the board meeting couldn’t take place. Mission accomplished. Postecoglou kept his job, and South Melbourne won their next game 1-0 against the Newcastle Breakers – beginning a six-match unbeaten run.

It wasn’t a lie. Vasilopoulos was feeling a bit off. But only a bit.

“I’m not a billionaire like him, but I would have given him a few words of advice: ‘Mate, you’re making a bloody big mistake here’.”

“It was 60-40,” he says – as in, 60 per cent motivated by the desire to foil the move against Postecoglou by the other board members, and 40 per cent genuine tiredness.

“After that, what happened? Back-to-back championships, going to Brazil, winning everything.”

Vasilopoulos, now 72, is perhaps the first person in football to have recognised the greatness within Postecoglou.

So what did he notice, and when?

“See, that’s what these guys now at Tottenham Hotspur don’t know,” he says. “These people, I don’t think they know the game like I do.”

Vasilopoulos is still coming to terms with the decision taken by Daniel........

© The Age