🔗 Share this article

Itbecame clear he endured losing against lower-league opposition. He weathered an important European final against one of the worst Tottenham teams for many years. He could survive losing at home against West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, his rigid approach, laying waste to some of the club’s best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, labeling his team the worst the club has ever seen. But there was one adversary with whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Regrettably, like many a Premiership right-back in Blackburn’s championship campaign, the coach took on Jason Wilcox and appears to have failed. The most distracted of readers will notice the paradoxical situation: a manager who often railed at his players for failing in one-on-one duels crumbling when confronted by the white heat and formidable presence of one of the Premier League’s most feared sporting directors.

In truth, this whole painful saga appears to portray the director in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been tempting, given his nine months in a similar role at Southampton, to view him as merely a drudge within the club's structure: a man who owed his position largely to his friendship with his former boss a fellow executive rather than any demonstrable skill. How mistaken we all were. By masterfully outsmarting United’s feted manager, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate Dan Ashworth before him, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated as one of the sport’s true generals: a strategic mind of which the club's competitors will now be justifiably concerned.

A Tactical Clash Over System and Philosophy

For example, it was the director , after having been part of the leadership that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim in the first place, played a key role in trying to persuade him to ditch his beloved formation. Naturally, these pleas faced pushback. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when issued from the mouth with the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of international appearances and a contributor to a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually he might agree to explain his reasoning to the rest of us. Maybe one day questions may arise why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, with no compensation reduction clause activated. The director seldom speaks in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers of this sport – men like him – simply operate at a level exceeding our prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, probably we would perceive is a series of ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not the same as being prepared to receive.

An Ultimate Authority In the Throne

But of course, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we overlook the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, merely executing the commands of his ultimate line manager the billionaire owner, who privately has emphasized his desire for a four-man defense. According to reports, the owner has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to embrace analytics and metrics. Per reports, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style to football “will be decided in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical football matters, leveraging his previous experience in industry and yachting. Above all he is immensely wealthy, and it is known, the wealthy are superior: more insightful, sagacious, strategically brilliant, fundamentally better. Who else could one trust to manage an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the building of a new stadium that appears similar to an abstract design, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

The New Soccer Order: Directors Above Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. For decades, clubs foolishly entrusted big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – even footballers. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to join a club and implement their plan through to completion. Yet how many companies have these guys set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the tactics by the directors and appoint a coach who will adapt their methods to suit. If coaches were formerly chefs, they have become more akin to delivery personnel: not really responsible for the food, yet finally accountable should it be delivered poorly or leaks out to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job has become less about defining the vision and more about selling it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they can do little to change. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of very young players into Europe and secures domestic cups, and effectively is dismissed for talking. A manager at Celtic sees his standing damaged while those individuals who appointed him live to blunder indefinitely.

The Modern Corporate Game: Responsibility Only for the Coaches

And perhaps in a small way this is simply corporate governance in action: the elevation of a gilded elite who are infallible, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can always be resolved by sacking without explanation. Hire the system coach and then dismiss him for playing excessively 3-4-3. Hire the project manager and later discard them for taking excessive time. And above all be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the reality that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.