🔗 Share this article

Iturns out Ruben Amorim could survive losing against Grimsby. He weathered an important continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He could survive losing at home to domestic rivals, a lowly league position, an unwavering system, undermining the team's best academy products, the 32% win rate, labeling the squad the worst in Manchester United history. Yet, there existed a single opponent against whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to tango. You come at the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, like many a top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s title-winning 1994-95 season, the coach came at Jason Wilcox and appears to have missed. The most casual observer can see the paradoxical situation: a manager who frequently berated at his players for losing one-on-one duels succumbing in the face of the intense pressure 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. It may have been easy, given his nine months of experience with the Saints, to view Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary within the club's structure: a man whose appointment was due largely to his close relationship with ex-colleague a fellow executive rather than any demonstrable skill. How mistaken everyone was. By masterfully outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated head coach, just as he bested the hapless a previous executive earlier, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated to be among the sport’s strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which United’s mid-table rivals will now be justifiably concerned.

A Strategic Clash Over Formation and Philosophy

For example, this was the director who having been part of the leadership that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist the coach in the first place, was instrumental in trying to persuade him to abandon his favored 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these pleas faced pushback. However, such directives carry more weight when issued from the mouth with the impeccable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to explain his reasoning publicly. Perhaps at some point he might be asked why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, with no compensation reduction clause activated. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers in football – individuals such as him – function at a level exceeding our mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, probably we would perceive is a series of ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not the same as being prepared to comprehend it.

The Ultimate Authority In Command

But of course, 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 directives of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has emphasized his preference for a back four. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for United to adopt data science and analytics. Per reports, in an executive meeting early in his minority ownership, he announced that the team's approach to football “will be decided by this group”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical football matters, leveraging his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, more wise, more tactically astute, fundamentally superior. Whom else would you trust to oversee an enlightened programme of austerity, the building of a new stadium that looks a lot like an abstract design, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

The Modern Football Order: Executives Over Managers

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels of the game. Historically, teams mistakenly entrusted big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, talent spotters – even footballers. Maybe previously feasible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with ideas and energy to go into a club and see their vision supported to fruition. Yet how many companies have such individuals set up? How many mass redundancies have they overseen? Far preferable to place the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to determine the strategy in the boardroom and hire a coach who can tailor their methods accordingly. If managers were formerly chefs, they are now more like delivery personnel: not really creating the food, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives cold or leaks out to meet standards.

In the meantime, a coach's role has become not about defining the vision and more about selling it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the visible figurehead of an organisation they have minimal power to change. Enzo Maresca takes a squad of very young players into Europe and secures domestic cups, and effectively is dismissed for speaking out. A manager at Celtic sees his standing damaged whereas those individuals who appointed him live to blunder another day.

The Neoliberal Game: Accountability for the Coaches

And perhaps in a small way this is simply neoliberalism at work: the rise of a gilded overclass who can never be wrong, whose choices are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can invariably be sacked away without explanation. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then fire them for using too much 3-4-3. Hire the process guy and then bin him for requiring excessive time. And above all be grateful; for the incremental season ticket price rises, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the adults – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.