Amorim's Fatal Mistake? Challenging The Executives and an Unassailable Executive Class

Itbecame clear Ruben Amorim could survive losing against Grimsby. Survive an important European final against one of the worst Tottenham teams for many years. He withstood home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, an unwavering system, undermining some of the club’s most promising academy products, a poor winning percentage, calling the squad the worst the club has ever seen. But there was one adversary with whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to engage. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, and you best not miss.

In truth, this whole bruising episode seems to paint the director in a whole new light. It may have been easy, based on his nine months in a similar role at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as merely a drudge in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position as much to his close relationship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How mistaken we all were. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated manager, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless Dan Ashworth before him, Jason Wilcox has proved himself to be among football's true generals: a strategic mind that United’s competitors will now be rightly wary.

The Tactical Clash Over Formation & Philosophy

For example, it was Jason Wilcox who being involved in the leadership that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim in the first place, played a key role in trying to persuade Amorim to abandon his beloved 3-4-3. Naturally, these pleas were resisted. But perhaps these judgements hold greater authority when issued from the mouth of a man the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually he might agree to explain his reasoning to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked regarding why the coach is walking away with full compensation, with no penalty clause in place. The director seldom speaks in public, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals in football – individuals such as him – simply operate at a level beyond our own mundane comprehension. Were he to speak, most likely all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Wanting is not the same as being ready to receive.

An Ultimate Power In the Throne

Naturally, 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 directives of his line manager the billionaire owner, who privately has emphasized his desire for a four-man defense. According to reports, the owner has also proposed deploying the forward as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for United to adopt 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”.

Ultimately, Sir Jim is an expert in this technical football matters, leveraging his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and as we all know, the wealthy are the best of us: more insightful, more wise, more tactically astute, simply superior. Whom else would you trust to oversee a strategic plan of cost-cutting, the construction of a new stadium that appears similar to an abstract design, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A Modern Football Order: Directors Above Coaches

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels football. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff like managers, scouts – even footballers. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with a philosophy and energy to go into a club and implement their plan through to completion. Yet how many businesses have such individuals established? What number of large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to place 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 determine the strategy in the boardroom and hire a coach who can tailor their methods to suit. If coaches were formerly chefs, they have become more like Deliveroo drivers: not really responsible for the food, but still finally accountable if it arrives cold or fails to meet standards.

Nowadays, a coach's role is increasingly not about defining the vision and more about selling it: the receptionist on the front desk, the visible figurehead of an organisation they have minimal power to change. Enzo Maresca leads a team of very young players into the Champions League and wins two medium-sized trophies, and essentially gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic sees his standing damaged while those individuals who hired him live to blunder another day.

A Neoliberal Game: Responsibility Only for the Few

And perhaps on some microcosmic level this is simply neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a privileged overclass who are infallible, whose choices remain untouchable, whose errors can always be sacked away without justification. Hire the system coach and then dismiss him for playing excessively that system. Bring in the project manager and later discard him for requiring too long. And above all show gratitude; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.