🔗 Share this article

Itranspired Ruben Amorim could survive losing against Grimsby. Survive an important European final versus one of the worst Tottenham teams for many years. He withstood home defeats against West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, laying waste to the team's best homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, calling his team the worst in Manchester United history. But there was one adversary with whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to engage. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a Premiership defender in Blackburn’s title-winning 1994-95 season, Amorim came at the executive and appears to have missed. The most casual observer will notice the paradoxical situation: a coach who frequently berated at his players for failing in individual battles crumbling in the face of the white heat and animal charisma of a England's top division's most feared sporting directors.

In truth, this whole painful saga seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his brief stint of experience with the Saints, to regard Jason Wilcox as little more than a functionary within the club's structure: a man who owed his position largely to his friendship with his former boss Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How mistaken everyone was. By masterfully outmanoeuvring United’s feted head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless Dan Ashworth before him, he has proved himself as one of football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind of which the club's mid-table rivals will now be justifiably concerned.

A Strategic Clash Regarding System & Ideology

For example, it was the director who having been part of the leadership that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim in the first place, was instrumental in trying to persuade Amorim to abandon his favored formation. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties met a certain resistance. However, these judgements hold greater authority when delivered by a man of a man the unimpeachable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of international appearances and a role in a championship team decades past.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to explain his reasoning to the rest of us. Maybe one day questions may arise why Amorim is departing with a full payout, with no penalty clause activated. The director seldom speaks in public, and with very good reason. The real thinkers of this sport – individuals such as him – simply operate on a plane exceeding our prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, most likely we would perceive is a series of high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not quite the same as being prepared to comprehend it.

The Supreme Power In the Throne

But of course, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, after all, merely executing the commands of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has emphasized his preference for a back four. It is reported, Ratcliffe has also proposed deploying the forward in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for the club to adopt analytics and analytics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit soon after his investment, he declared that United’s style of play “will be determined by this group”.

After all, Sir Jim is an expert in this technical footballing stuff, leveraging his previous experience in industry and yachting. Above all he is immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the rich are superior: more insightful, more wise, more tactically astute, simply better. Who else would you trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the construction of a modern arena that appears similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of a new striker?

The Modern Football Hierarchy: Directors Over Managers

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels football. For decades, teams mistakenly entrusted major sporting choices to low-level employees such as coaches, talent spotters – even footballers. Perhaps it was once feasible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with a philosophy and drive to go into an organization and implement their plan supported to fruition. But how many businesses have these guys established? What number of large-scale layoffs have they managed? Better by far to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the guys with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to determine the strategy in the boardroom and appoint someone who will adapt their offering to suit. If managers were formerly chefs, they are now more like delivery personnel: not creating the product, but still finally accountable if it arrives poorly or leaks out of the box.

Nowadays, their job has become not about defining the vision and more about selling it: the receptionist on the front desk, the visible figurehead of an organisation they can do little to influence. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into the Champions League and wins domestic cups, and essentially is dismissed for speaking out. Wilfried Nancy finds his reputation ruined whereas the people who appointed him live to blunder another day.

A Modern Corporate Football: Accountability for the Few

And possibly in a small way this is simply neoliberalism at work: the rise of a privileged elite who are infallible, whose decisions remain untouchable, whose errors can invariably be sacked away without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach only to fire him for using excessively that system. Hire the project manager and then bin them for requiring excessive time. And most importantly be grateful; for your modest season ticket price rises, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – however well qualified – are in charge.