Ange Postecoglou always felt like “a coach masquerading as a player” and his vocation for management long pre-dates his playing days with South Melbourne Hellas and Australia.

Postecoglou the boss was shaped by his father, Jim, and from the moment he took charge of a team of his friends at Prahran High School, aged 12, he never looked back.

As far as strong influences during his playing career go, however, Hungary icon Ferenc Puskas was probably the most significant, and an as yet unreleased documentary, Puskas in Australia, sheds further light on the pair’s fascinating relationship.

The film, by Australian journalist Tony Wilson, details Puskas’s spell in charge of Hellas, which culminated with their 1991 triumph in the NSL Grand Final against Melbourne Croatia.

“Get off the pitch, dad, you’re going to get arrested,” Postecoglou remembers telling his father, who had joined the celebrations after Hellas won a chaotic penalty shootout (Postecoglou impressively thumped his spot-kick into the top corner to keep them alive).

The image of Postecoglou and Puskas, the latter’s stomach bulging over his belt, holding the trophy aloft is still one of the Tottenham manager’s most treasured. Postecoglou acted as translator and chauffeur for Puskas, who spoke five languages, including Greek, but only basic English, and their daily drives to training formed part of his footballing education. “By the end of it, I got really close to him,” Postecoglou says.

Postecoglou was driving a creaking Datsun 200, but Puskas, whose absolute humility is remembered by every one of the documentary’s contributors, was supremely unconcerned, even as the car began falling apart.

“I literally had to take my window winder off, pass it over, he’d ratchet in, do his window, pass it back and I’d do mine,” Postecoglou says. “The Cristiano Ronaldo [of his day], but he didn’t care.”

Puskas’s relaxed attitude and enjoyment of the finer things in life also shines through (his ex-players recall him once tucking into a platter of pasta which was intended for the whole squad), and Postecoglou remembers the old Datsun getting a flat while he was driving Puskas to the airport.

While Postecoglou set about jacking up the car and changing the tyre, his suit gradually becoming coated in oil, Puskas did not move from his seat.

Postecoglou’s role evokes memories of Jose Mourinho’s formative years spent with Bobby Robson at Barcelona.

In an interview in July, Postecoglou said his role as Puskas’s go-between allowed him to be “half coaching” the team, laying the ground for him to take over as Hellas manager in 1996, and he says in the film that the key thing he took from Puskas as a coach was the importance of “having a united dressing room that cares about something beyond the result”. Ensuring his teams have a greater purpose than simply winning is now a cornerstone of Postecoglou’s philosophy.

There are other alluring through-lines in their approaches. Postecoglou shares with Puskas a total commitment to attacking football, and their title-winning Hellas team was built around young players who were likely more willing to follow the manager’s unorthodox instructions than more experienced heads.

At a time when every other side in Australia played a 4-4-2, Puskas insisted on using two wingers and scolded them for tracking back, happily risking Postecoglou and the other defenders being massively outnumbered.

Postecoglou, too, has shown a disdain for following trends as a coach, and built his winning teams around a core of impressionable young players.

Far more than tactics, however, it was Puskas’s mindset that impressed most upon a young Postecoglou.

Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all-time, Puskas was humble to his core and totally at ease with his players making mistakes or conceding goals.

“As long as we won, at the end of the day he didn’t care about the rest of it,” Postecoglou said in July. “I just thought to myself, ‘What a fantastic outlook to have’. That had an effect on me of, ‘Okay, that’s the kind of manager that I want to be’.”

Today, there is also something of Puskas in Postecoglou’s zen touchline demeanour, which rarely changes even as his side mount exhilarating comebacks, which has happened repeatedly with Spurs this season.

Speaking this week about his own calmness during matches, Postecoglou recalled Puskas slumped in the dugout during that dramatic Grand Final shootout.

“He didn’t even move from his seat,” the Spurs manager said. “He was like, ‘I’ve played in World Cups, I’ve seen it all, this is not pressure’.

“And it had an impression on me. But you can’t fake that, it’s got to be part of who you are. Just because the great man was able to be so calm on the bench doesn’t mean I’m going to be like him. It has to be part of your personality.”

In the end, what has stuck with Postecoglou, 18 years after Puskas’s death, is the man, rather than the coach.

“I loved every minute of it,” he says in the film. “Just sitting in the car talking with him, having a laugh with him. Part of me wanted to show him who I’ve become.”