Amorim's Fatal Mistake? Taking On Wilcox and an Unassailable Leadership Tier

Itranspired Ruben Amorim endured losing against lower-league opposition. He weathered an important continental showpiece against a particularly poor Tottenham teams for many years. He could survive losing at home against West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, his rigid approach, laying waste to some of the club’s most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling his team the worst the club has ever seen. But there was a single opponent against whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to tango. You come at Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

In truth, this entire painful saga seems to paint the director in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his brief stint of experience with the Saints, to regard him as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: a man who owed his position largely to his close relationship with his former boss a fellow executive rather than any demonstrable skill. How wrong we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring United’s feted head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive before him, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated as one of football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind of which United’s mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

The Tactical Conflict Over System & Ideology

To illustrate, this was Jason Wilcox , after being involved in the leadership that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach in the first place, was instrumental in trying to persuade him to abandon his beloved formation. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties faced pushback. However, such directives hold greater authority when delivered from the mouth with the unimpeachable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually he may be persuaded to explain his reasoning to the rest of us. Maybe one day questions may arise why Amorim is departing with a full payout, without any compensation reduction clause in place. But Jason Wilcox seldom speaks in public, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals of this sport – individuals such as Jason Wilcox – function on a plane exceeding our mundane comprehension. Were he to speak, most likely we would perceive would be high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not quite the same as being prepared to receive.

An Ultimate Authority In Command

But of course, in training our focus on the sporting director we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. The director is, in reality, merely executing the commands of his ultimate superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has made very clear his desire for a back four. It is reported, Ratcliffe has also proposed deploying the forward as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for the club to embrace data science and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting soon after his investment, he declared that United’s style of play “shall be decided by this group”.

Ultimately, Sir Jim is an expert in these intricate footballing stuff, drawing from his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Most importantly he remains immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, more wise, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Whom else could one trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a modern arena that appears a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

The New Football Order: Executives Over Coaches

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. Historically, clubs foolishly delegated big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Maybe previously possible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to join a club and implement their plan through to completion. Yet how many companies have these guys set up? How many mass redundancies have they overseen? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the tactics in the boardroom and hire someone who will adapt their offering accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they have become more like Deliveroo drivers: not really creating the food, but still ultimately answerable should it be delivered poorly or leaks out of the box.

In the meantime, a coach's role has become less about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the public face for a club they can do little to influence. Enzo Maresca leads a team of literal children into the Champions League and wins domestic cups, and essentially is dismissed for speaking out. A manager at Celtic finds his standing damaged whereas the people who appointed him live to blunder indefinitely.

The Neoliberal Football: Responsibility for the Few

And perhaps in a small way this is simply corporate governance in action: the rise of a gilded overclass who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always untouchable, whose errors can invariably be sacked away without explanation. Appoint the 3-4-3 coach only to fire him for playing excessively 3-4-3. Bring in the project manager and then discard them for taking excessive time. And above all show gratitude; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for your new summer signings, for the reality that the adults – however well qualified – remain in control.