Amorim's Critical Mistake? Challenging Wilcox and an Infallible Executive Tier

Tbecame clear Ruben Amorim was able to withstand losing against lower-league opposition. He weathered a decisive European final versus a particularly poor Spurs sides in living memory. He could survive home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, an unwavering system, squandering the team's most promising academy products, a poor winning percentage, calling the squad the worst the club has ever seen. But there was a single opponent with whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to engage. You come at Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

In truth, this entire painful saga appears to portray the director in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his nine months in a similar role at Southampton, to view Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: a man who owed his position as much to his close relationship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada as any verifiable talent. How mistaken we all were. By masterfully outsmarting United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the hapless Dan Ashworth earlier, he has proved himself as one of football's true generals: a strategic mind of which the club's competitors are now rightly wary.

The Tactical Conflict Regarding System & Ideology

To illustrate, it was Jason Wilcox who being involved in the leadership that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim originally, was instrumental in trying to persuade him to ditch his favored formation. Naturally, these entreaties faced pushback. However, such directives carry more weight when delivered from the mouth with the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to outline his thought processes to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked regarding why the coach is departing with a full payout, without any penalty clause activated. The director speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate at a level beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, probably all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Wanting is not equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

An Supreme Power In the Throne

Naturally, in training our focus on the sporting director we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, simply carrying out the commands of his ultimate line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has emphasized his desire for a back four. It is reported, Ratcliffe has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to adopt analytics and metrics. Per reports, during a leadership summit early in his investment, he announced that United’s style to football “shall be decided in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in these intricate football matters, drawing from his background in petrochemicals and sailing. Most importantly he remains immensely wealthy, and it is known, the rich are superior: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply 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?

A New Football Hierarchy: Executives Above Managers

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels of the game. Historically, clubs foolishly delegated big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Maybe previously possible for a young, innovative manager with ideas and drive to go into an organization and see their vision supported to fruition. Yet how many companies have such individuals established? How many large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the guys with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to determine the tactics in the boardroom and hire a coach who can tailor their offering accordingly. If coaches 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 of the box.

In the meantime, their job has become less about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to influence. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of very young players into the Champions League and secures two medium-sized trophies, and essentially is dismissed for talking. A manager at Celtic finds his standing damaged whereas the people who appointed him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Game: Responsibility Only for the Coaches

And possibly in a small way this represents corporate governance in action: the elevation of a privileged elite who are infallible, whose choices are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can invariably be sacked away without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach only to dismiss him for using excessively 3-4-3. Hire the process guy and later discard him for taking excessive time. And above all be grateful; for the incremental season ticket price rises, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.