🔗 Share this article

Transpired the manager could survive a loss to lower-league opposition. He weathered losing a crucial continental showpiece against one of the worst Tottenham teams for many years. He could survive home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, an unwavering system, laying waste to some of the club’s best academy products, a poor winning percentage, calling his team the poorest the club has ever seen. But there was one adversary with whom Ruben Amorim was not permitted to dance. You come at the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous Premiership right-back in Blackburn’s championship 1994-95 season, the coach came at the executive and appears to have failed. Even the most distracted of readers will notice the paradoxical situation: a manager who often railed at his players for losing individual battles succumbing in the face of the white heat and formidable presence of a the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

In truth, this whole painful saga seems to paint the director in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been tempting, given his brief stint in a similar role at Southampton, to view Jason Wilcox as little more than a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position largely to his close relationship with his former boss Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How wrong we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated head coach, just as he bested the hapless a previous executive before him, he has proved himself as one of the sport’s strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that United’s mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

A Strategic Clash Regarding Formation and Philosophy

For example, it was the director , after having been part of the hierarchy that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach in the first place, played a key role in trying to persuade him to abandon his beloved formation. Naturally, these entreaties were resisted. However, such directives hold greater authority when delivered by a man of a man the unimpeachable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, holder of international appearances and a contributor to a title-winning side from 31 years ago.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point questions may arise why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, without any penalty clause in place. But Jason Wilcox seldom speaks in public, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals in football – men like him – function on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, probably 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 Supreme Authority Behind Command

But of course, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we overlook 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 in private has made very clear his preference for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed deploying the forward in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for United to embrace analytics and metrics. Per reports, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he declared that the team's approach to football “shall be determined by this group”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in these intricate football matters, drawing from his previous experience in industry and sailing. Above all he remains incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are superior: more perceptive, sagacious, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Whom else would you trust to oversee an enlightened programme of austerity, the building of a modern arena that appears similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of a new striker?

The Modern Soccer Order: Executives Over Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing in top-tier of the game. Historically, clubs foolishly entrusted big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with ideas and energy to join an organization and see their vision through to completion. But how many companies have these guys established? How many mass redundancies have they managed? Better by far to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with impressive professional resumes. Better by far to decide the tactics by the directors and appoint a coach who can tailor their offering to suit. If managers were formerly chefs, they have become more like Deliveroo drivers: not really responsible for the food, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or fails to meet standards.

In the meantime, a coach's role has become not about defining the vision and more about selling it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the public face for a club they can do little to change. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into Europe and secures two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for talking. Wilfried Nancy finds his reputation ruined while those individuals who hired him continue to make errors another day.

A Neoliberal Football: Responsibility Only for the Coaches

And perhaps on some microcosmic level this represents neoliberalism in action: the elevation of a gilded elite who are infallible, whose decisions remain untouchable, whose errors can invariably be resolved by sacking without explanation. Hire the system coach and then fire him for using too much that system. Hire the project manager and later discard them for requiring excessive time. And above all be grateful; for the incremental season ticket price rises, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.