🔗 Share this article

Itbecame clear Ruben Amorim endured defeat by lower-league opposition. Survive losing a crucial European final versus a particularly poor Spurs sides in living memory. He withstood home defeats against domestic rivals, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, squandering the team's most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, labeling the squad the worst in Manchester United history. But there was one adversary against whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to engage. You come at Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, similar to numerous top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s championship campaign, Amorim came at Jason Wilcox and seems to have failed. Even the most casual observer will notice the paradoxical situation: a coach who frequently berated his squad for failing in individual battles succumbing in the face of the intense pressure and animal charisma of one of England's top division's most intimidating sporting directors.

And frankly, this whole bruising episode appears to portray the director in a different perspective. It may have been tempting, based on his nine months in a similar role at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as little more than a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual whose appointment was due as much to his friendship with ex-colleague a fellow executive rather than any demonstrable skill. How wrong we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring United’s feted manager, just as he bested the hapless Dan Ashworth before him, Jason Wilcox has proved himself to be among football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that United’s mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

A Strategic Conflict Regarding Formation & Ideology

To illustrate, this was the director who being involved in the hierarchy that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim in the first place, played a key role in trying to persuade Amorim to abandon his beloved 3-4-3. Naturally, these pleas met a certain resistance. However, such directives carry more weight when issued by a man with the impeccable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, holder of international appearances and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his reasoning to the rest of us. Maybe one day questions may arise why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, with no penalty clause activated. The director seldom speaks in public, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – function on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, most likely all we would hear is a series of ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Wanting is not quite the same as being ready to comprehend it.

The Ultimate Authority Behind Command

Naturally, in training our focus on the sporting director we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, merely executing the commands of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has made very clear his desire for a back four. According to reports, the owner has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for United to adopt data science and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he declared that the team's approach to football “will be determined by this group”.

After all, Sir Jim is a specialist in these intricate footballing stuff, drawing from his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Most importantly he is immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the rich are the best of us: more insightful, more wise, strategically brilliant, fundamentally superior. Who else would you trust to manage an enlightened programme of austerity, the building of a new stadium that looks similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of a new striker?

The New Soccer Hierarchy: Directors Above Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. For decades, teams mistakenly entrusted major sporting choices to low-level employees like managers, scouts – even footballers. Perhaps it was once possible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to join a club and see their vision through to completion. Yet how many companies have such individuals established? How many mass redundancies have they managed? Far preferable to place genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the guys with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the strategy in the boardroom and hire a coach who will adapt their offering accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they are now more like delivery personnel: not really creating the product, yet ultimately answerable if it arrives cold or leaks out of the box.

Nowadays, their job has become not about defining the vision and more about selling it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the public face of an organisation they can do little to change. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of very young players into the Champions League and wins domestic cups, and effectively gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic sees his reputation ruined whereas the people who appointed him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Modern Corporate Football: Accountability for the Coaches

And possibly on some microcosmic level this is simply corporate governance at work: the elevation of a privileged elite who can never be wrong, whose choices are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can always be sacked away without explanation. Appoint the system coach and then dismiss them for using excessively that system. Bring in the project manager and later bin him for taking excessive time. And most importantly be grateful; for your modest season ticket price rises, for your new summer signings, for the fact that the adults – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.