🔗 Share this article

Tbecame clear he endured defeat by lower-league opposition. Survive an important continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He withstood home defeats to domestic rivals, a lowly league position, his rigid approach, undermining the team's best homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, calling his team the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed one adversary against whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to dance. If you challenge the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Regrettably, like many a top-flight right-back during Blackburn Rovers' championship 1994-95 season, Amorim took on the executive and seems to have failed. Even the most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a coach who frequently berated his squad for failing in one-on-one duels succumbing when confronted by the intense pressure and animal charisma of one of the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

And frankly, this entire bruising episode appears to portray the director in a different perspective. It may have been easy, based on his brief stint in a similar role at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as little more than a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position largely to his close relationship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada rather than any demonstrable skill. How mistaken we all were. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated manager, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate Dan Ashworth earlier, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated to be among the sport’s strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that United’s competitors will now be rightly wary.

A Strategic Clash Regarding Formation and Ideology

To illustrate, it was Jason Wilcox who having been part of the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach originally, was instrumental in trying to persuade Amorim to abandon his favored 3-4-3. Naturally, these entreaties met a certain resistance. However, these judgements hold greater authority when delivered from the mouth with the impeccable football pedigree he possesses, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually he may be persuaded to outline his reasoning publicly. Perhaps at some point questions may arise why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, with no compensation reduction clause activated. But Jason Wilcox seldom speaks publicly, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals in football – men like him – function on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, probably we would perceive would be high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not equivalent to being ready to receive.

The Ultimate Authority In the Throne

But of course, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we overlook the true genius behind the club's current leadership. The director is, in reality, merely executing the commands of his ultimate superior the billionaire owner, who in private has made very clear his preference for a four-man defense. According to reports, the owner has also suggested playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to adopt data science and analytics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit early in his investment, he announced that United’s style of play “shall be decided by this group”.

After all, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical footballing stuff, drawing from his background in industry and sailing. Most importantly he is immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the wealthy are the best of us: more perceptive, more wise, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Whom else would you trust to oversee a strategic plan of austerity, the construction of a modern arena that appears a lot like an abstract design, the acquisition of a new striker?

The Modern Football Order: Executives Over Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff like managers, talent spotters – even footballers. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to go into a club and see their vision supported to fruition. But how many businesses have these guys established? How many mass redundancies have they overseen? Far preferable to invest genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to decide the strategy by the directors and appoint someone who will adapt their methods accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not really responsible for the food, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives cold or fails to meet standards.

In the meantime, a coach's role is increasingly less about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they can do little to influence. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of literal children into Europe and secures two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic sees his reputation ruined whereas the people who appointed him live to blunder another day.

The Neoliberal Game: Responsibility for the Coaches

And possibly on some microcosmic level this is simply corporate governance at work: the elevation of a gilded elite who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose errors can invariably be sacked away without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then dismiss him for using excessively 3-4-3. Bring in the project manager and later discard them for requiring excessive time. And most importantly be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest summer signings, for the fact that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.