🔗 Share this article

Itbecame clear Ruben Amorim could survive a loss to Grimsby. He weathered an important continental showpiece against a particularly poor Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, an unwavering system, squandering some of the club’s most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling his team the poorest in Manchester United history. But there was one adversary with whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to tango. You come at the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Regrettably, similar to numerous top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s title-winning 1994-95 season, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and seems to have missed. Even the most distracted of readers will notice the paradoxical situation: a manager who frequently berated his squad for losing one-on-one duels crumbling in the face of the white heat and formidable presence of one of the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

And frankly, this entire painful saga seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his brief stint of experience with the Saints, to regard Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual whose appointment was due as much to his close relationship with his former boss a fellow executive as any demonstrable skill. How wrong everyone was. In brilliantly outsmarting the club's celebrated head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless a previous executive before him, he has proved himself as one of football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind of which United’s competitors will now be rightly wary.

A Strategic Clash Over Formation & Philosophy

To illustrate, this was the director who being involved in the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim in the first place, played a key role in attempting to convince him to abandon his beloved 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties met a certain resistance. However, such directives carry more weight when issued from the mouth of a man the impeccable football pedigree he possesses, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a title-winning side from 31 years ago.

Perhaps in time he may be persuaded to outline his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point questions may arise why Amorim is departing with full compensation, without any compensation reduction clause in place. But Jason Wilcox seldom speaks in public, and with very good reason. The real thinkers of this sport – individuals such as Jason Wilcox – function on a plane beyond our own mundane comprehension. Were he to speak, probably we would perceive would be ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not quite equivalent to being prepared to receive.

An Supreme Authority Behind the Throne

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we overlook the real power behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, after all, simply carrying out the commands of his line manager the billionaire owner, who privately has emphasized his desire for a four-man defense. It is reported, the owner has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for United to adopt analytics and metrics. Per reports, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style to football “shall be determined in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical footballing stuff, drawing from his background in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are the best of us: more insightful, sagacious, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Whom else would you trust to oversee a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a new stadium that appears a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of a new striker?

The New Soccer Order: Directors Over Coaches

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. Historically, teams mistakenly entrusted big footballing decisions to subordinate staff like managers, scouts – even footballers. Maybe previously possible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with ideas and energy to join an organization and see their vision supported to fruition. Yet how many companies have such individuals established? How many large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the guys with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to decide the strategy by the directors and hire someone who will adapt their offering to suit. If coaches were once chefs, they have become more akin to delivery personnel: not really responsible for the food, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives cold or leaks out to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly less about crafting the philosophy and more about selling it: the receptionist of the operation, the visible figurehead of an organisation they can do little to influence. Enzo Maresca leads a team of very young players into the Champions League and secures two medium-sized trophies, and essentially gets sacked for talking. A manager at Celtic finds his standing damaged whereas those individuals who hired him live to blunder another day.

The Neoliberal Football: Accountability Only for the Few

And perhaps in a small way this is simply neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a privileged elite who are infallible, whose choices are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can always be sacked away without explanation. Hire the system coach and then dismiss him for playing excessively 3-4-3. Bring in the project manager and then bin them for requiring excessive time. And most importantly be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.