🔗 Share this article

Iturns out Ruben Amorim endured a loss to lower-league opposition. Survive a decisive European final versus one of the worst Spurs sides for many years. He withstood losing at home to domestic rivals, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, laying waste to some of the club’s most promising academy products, the 32% win rate, labeling his team the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed one adversary against whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to tango. You come at the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Regrettably, like many a top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s championship campaign, Amorim took on the executive and appears to have missed. The most distracted of readers will notice the paradoxical situation: a manager who frequently berated at his players for failing in individual battles crumbling when confronted by the white heat and animal charisma of a the Premier League’s most feared sporting directors.

In truth, this whole painful saga appears to portray Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his brief stint in a similar role at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary within the club's structure: an individual who owed his position as much to his friendship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How mistaken everyone was. In brilliantly outsmarting the club's celebrated head coach, just as he bested the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, Jason Wilcox has proved himself as one of football's strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which United’s mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

A Tactical Conflict Regarding Formation and Philosophy

For example, it was the director , after having been part of the hierarchy that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim in the first place, played a key role in trying to persuade him to abandon his favored formation. Unsurprisingly, these pleas met a certain resistance. However, these judgements carry more weight when delivered by a man of a man the unimpeachable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, holder of international appearances and a contributor to a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to outline his reasoning publicly. Maybe one day he might be asked why Amorim is departing with a full payout, with no penalty clause activated. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – function at a level exceeding our prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, most likely we would perceive would be ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not quite equivalent to being prepared to receive.

The Ultimate Power In Command

Naturally, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, merely executing the directives of his superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has made very clear his preference for a four-man defense. According to reports, the owner has also suggested deploying the forward in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace data science and metrics. Per reports, in an executive meeting early in his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style of play “shall be decided in this room”.

After all, Sir Jim is an expert in these intricate footballing stuff, leveraging his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Above all he remains immensely wealthy, and it is known, the wealthy are superior: more perceptive, more wise, more tactically astute, simply better. Whom else could one trust to oversee a strategic plan of cost-cutting, the construction of a modern arena that appears similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of a new striker?

A New Soccer Order: Executives Over Managers

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels football. Historically, clubs foolishly entrusted big footballing decisions to low-level employees such as coaches, talent spotters – even footballers. Maybe previously feasible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to join a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. But how many companies have these guys set up? What number of mass redundancies have they managed? Far preferable to place genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with impressive professional resumes. Better by far to determine the strategy in the boardroom and hire a coach who can tailor their methods accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they are now more like Deliveroo drivers: not responsible for the food, yet finally accountable if it arrives cold or leaks out to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job has become not about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the public face for a club they have minimal power to change. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of very young players into the Champions League and wins two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for talking. A manager at Celtic sees his reputation ruined whereas those individuals who hired him live to blunder another day.

The Neoliberal Game: Accountability for the Few

And possibly in a small way this is simply corporate governance in action: the elevation of a privileged elite who are infallible, whose decisions are always untouchable, whose errors can invariably be resolved by sacking without justification. Hire the system coach only to dismiss him for using too much 3-4-3. Hire the project manager and later bin them for taking excessive time. And most importantly show gratitude; for the incremental season ticket price rises, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – however well qualified – are in charge.