Turns out the manager was able to withstand a loss to lower-league opposition. He weathered a decisive continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He could survive home defeats against West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, an unwavering system, squandering the team's most promising academy products, a poor winning percentage, calling the squad the poorest in Manchester United history. But there was a single opponent with whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to tango. You come at the sporting director, and you best not miss.
Unfortunately, like many a Premiership right-back in Blackburn’s championship campaign, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and appears to have failed. The most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a coach who often railed his squad for losing one-on-one duels succumbing when confronted by the intense pressure and formidable presence of one of England's top division's most intimidating football executives.
In truth, this entire bruising episode appears to portray the director in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his brief stint in a similar role with the Saints, to view him as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual whose appointment was due as much to his close relationship with ex-colleague a fellow executive as any demonstrable skill. How wrong we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the hapless Dan Ashworth earlier, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated to be among the sport’s true generals: a tactical intellect of which United’s competitors will now be rightly wary.
For example, this was the director , after being involved in the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach in the first place, was instrumental in attempting to convince him to abandon his favored 3-4-3. Naturally, these entreaties met a certain resistance. However, these judgements carry more weight when issued from the mouth with the unimpeachable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, holder of three England caps and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.
Perhaps in time he may be persuaded to outline his thought processes to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, without any compensation reduction clause in place. The director seldom speaks in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers of this sport – individuals such as him – function at a level beyond our own prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, most likely we would perceive is a series of ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not quite the same as being prepared to receive.
But of course, in training our focus on the sporting director we overlook the real power behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, in reality, simply carrying out the directives of his superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has made very clear his desire for a back four. According to reports, the owner has also suggested deploying the forward in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace data science and metrics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting soon after his investment, he declared that the team's approach to football “shall be determined in this room”.
Ultimately, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical football matters, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and sailing. Above all he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, fundamentally better. Who else would you trust to oversee a strategic plan of austerity, the construction of a modern arena that appears a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?
This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. For decades, clubs foolishly entrusted major sporting choices to low-level employees like managers, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once possible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to join an organization and implement their plan through to completion. But how many businesses have such individuals set up? How many mass redundancies have they overseen? Better by far to invest the real power where it belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the strategy by the directors and appoint someone who will adapt their methods accordingly. If coaches were formerly chefs, they are now more like Deliveroo drivers: not creating the food, yet ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or leaks out to meet standards.
In the meantime, their job is increasingly less about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the receptionist of the operation, the public face for a club they have minimal power to change. Enzo Maresca leads a team of very young players into Europe and secures two medium-sized trophies, and essentially is dismissed for talking. A manager at Celtic finds his reputation ruined whereas the people who appointed him live to blunder another day.
And possibly in a small way this is simply neoliberalism at work: the rise of a privileged overclass who can never be wrong, whose decisions remain sacrosanct, whose errors can always be sacked away without explanation. Hire the system coach only to fire him for playing excessively that system. Bring in the process guy and later bin them for requiring excessive time. And most importantly show gratitude; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the fact that the adults – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.
Maya Chen is a seasoned tech journalist and software developer with over a decade of experience in digital innovation and cybersecurity.
