🔗 Share this article

Iturns out the manager was able to withstand defeat by Grimsby. He weathered a decisive continental showpiece against one of the worst Spurs sides in living memory. He could survive losing at home against West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, laying waste to the team's most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling the squad the worst in Manchester United history. But there was one adversary with whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to engage. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, similar to numerous top-flight defender in Blackburn’s championship campaign, Amorim came at Jason Wilcox and appears to have missed. Even the most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a coach who frequently berated at his players for losing individual battles succumbing in the face of the intense pressure and animal charisma of one of England's top division's most feared sporting directors.

In truth, this entire bruising episode seems to paint the director in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his nine months of experience at Southampton, to view him as merely a drudge within the club's structure: an individual whose appointment was due as much to his close relationship with his former boss Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How mistaken everyone was. By masterfully outmanoeuvring United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the hapless Dan Ashworth before him, Jason Wilcox has proved himself as one of the sport’s strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect that United’s competitors are now rightly wary.

The Strategic Conflict Regarding System and Ideology

To illustrate, it was the director who having been part of the leadership that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim originally, played a key role in attempting to convince Amorim to abandon his beloved 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties were resisted. But perhaps such directives carry more weight when delivered from the mouth with the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, holder of international appearances and a role in a championship team decades past.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked regarding why the coach is departing with full compensation, without any penalty clause in place. The director seldom speaks in public, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – function at a level beyond our own prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, most likely we would perceive would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Wanting is not equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Power In the Throne

But of course, in training our focus on the sporting director we overlook the true genius behind the modern United throne. Jason Wilcox is, after all, merely executing the commands of his ultimate line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has emphasized his desire for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also suggested deploying the forward as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for United to embrace data science and analytics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit early in his investment, he announced that the team's approach to football “will be decided in this room”.

Ultimately, Sir Jim is an expert in these intricate footballing stuff, drawing from his previous experience in industry and sailing. Most importantly he is immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the wealthy are the best of us: more insightful, sagacious, strategically brilliant, fundamentally superior. Who else would you trust to oversee an enlightened programme of austerity, the building of a new stadium that appears similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

The New Soccer Order: Directors Over Managers

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent in top-tier of the game. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated big footballing decisions to low-level employees such as coaches, scouts – even footballers. Perhaps it was once feasible for a young, visionary coach with ideas and energy to go into a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. Yet how many companies have these guys established? How many mass redundancies have they overseen? Far preferable to place the real power where it belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to determine the tactics by the directors and appoint someone who can tailor their offering accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they have become more like Deliveroo drivers: not really creating the product, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or fails of the box.

In the meantime, a coach's role has become less about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the receptionist on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to influence. Enzo Maresca leads a team of literal children into Europe and wins 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 another day.

A Neoliberal Game: Responsibility Only for the Few

And perhaps on some microcosmic level this represents neoliberalism in action: the rise of a gilded overclass who can never be wrong, whose choices are always untouchable, whose mistakes can invariably be sacked away without explanation. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then fire him for using excessively that system. Hire the process guy and then bin him for taking excessive time. And above all show gratitude; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for your new summer signings, for the fact that the grownups – however well qualified – are in charge.