🔗 Share this article

Itbecame clear Ruben Amorim endured a loss to lower-league opposition. He weathered an important continental showpiece against one of the worst Spurs sides for many years. He withstood home defeats against West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, an unwavering system, squandering the team's best homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, labeling his team the worst in Manchester United history. Yet, there existed one adversary with whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to tango. You come at the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, like many a Premiership defender in Blackburn’s championship 1994-95 season, the coach took on the executive and seems to have missed. Even the most casual observer can see the paradoxical situation: a coach who frequently berated his squad for losing one-on-one duels succumbing when confronted by the intense pressure and formidable presence of a England's top division's most feared sporting directors.

In truth, this whole painful saga seems to paint the director in a different perspective. It may have been tempting, based on his brief stint in a similar role at Southampton, to regard him as little more than a functionary in the United exoskeleton: a man whose appointment was due as much to his friendship with his former boss Omar Berrada as any verifiable talent. How mistaken everyone was. In brilliantly outsmarting the club's celebrated head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate Dan Ashworth earlier, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated to be among football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that the club's mid-table rivals are now justifiably concerned.

The Strategic Conflict Regarding Formation & Ideology

For example, this was Jason Wilcox , after having been part of the hierarchy that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim in the first place, was instrumental in trying to persuade him to abandon his favored formation. Naturally, these pleas were resisted. However, such directives hold greater authority when delivered from the mouth with the unimpeachable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of international appearances and a contributor to a championship team from 31 years ago.

Maybe eventually he might agree to outline his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, with no penalty clause activated. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely publicly, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals of this sport – 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 complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not the same as being ready to comprehend it.

An Supreme Authority Behind the Throne

But of course, in training our focus on the sporting director we overlook the true genius 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 desire for a back four. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed deploying the forward as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to embrace data science and metrics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style to football “shall be determined by this group”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical football matters, leveraging his previous experience in petrochemicals and yachting. Above all he is immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the rich are superior: more insightful, sagacious, strategically brilliant, fundamentally better. Who else would you trust to manage an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the building of a modern arena that looks similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

The Modern Soccer Order: Directors Above Managers

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent in top-tier of the game. Historically, teams mistakenly delegated big footballing decisions to low-level employees like managers, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once possible for a young, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to go into an organization and see their vision supported to fruition. Yet how many businesses have such individuals set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the strategy in the boardroom and appoint someone who will adapt their offering accordingly. If managers were formerly chefs, they have become more like delivery personnel: not really creating the product, yet finally accountable if it arrives poorly or leaks out of the box.

Nowadays, a coach's role is increasingly not about defining the vision and more about selling it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the public face for a club they can do little to influence. Enzo Maresca takes a squad of very young players into Europe and secures domestic cups, and essentially gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic finds his standing damaged while those individuals who appointed him live to blunder indefinitely.

The Neoliberal Game: Accountability for the Few

And perhaps in a small way this is simply neoliberalism in action: the elevation of a gilded elite who can never be wrong, whose choices are always sacrosanct, whose errors can invariably be sacked away without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach only to fire him for using excessively 3-4-3. Hire the project manager and then discard him for taking too long. And most importantly show gratitude; for your modest season ticket price rises, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.