Amorim's Fatal Error? Taking On Wilcox and the Unassailable Executive Class

Itranspired Ruben Amorim endured a loss to Grimsby. He weathered a decisive European final against one of the worst Spurs sides in living memory. He could survive losing at home to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, laying waste to the team's most promising homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, calling his team the worst the club has ever seen. But there was a single opponent against whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

And frankly, this entire painful saga seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his nine months of experience at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as little more than a drudge in the United exoskeleton: an individual whose appointment was due largely to his close relationship with his former boss Omar Berrada rather than any demonstrable skill. How wrong everyone was. By masterfully outsmarting the club's celebrated head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive before him, he has demonstrated to be among the sport’s strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that the club's competitors will now be justifiably concerned.

The Tactical Clash Over Formation & Ideology

To illustrate, it was Jason Wilcox who being involved in the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach in the first place, played a key role in trying to persuade Amorim to abandon his beloved formation. Unsurprisingly, these pleas were resisted. But perhaps such directives carry more weight when delivered from the mouth of a man the unimpeachable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Perhaps in time he may be persuaded to outline his reasoning to the rest of us. Maybe one day questions may arise why Amorim is walking away with a full payout, without any compensation reduction clause activated. The director speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers in football – individuals such as him – function on a plane beyond our own mundane comprehension. Were he to speak, most likely all we would hear is a series of high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Power In the Throne

But of course, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the real power behind the modern United throne. The director is, in reality, simply carrying out the directives of his superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has made very clear his preference for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed deploying the forward as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for the club to embrace data science and metrics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit soon after his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style of play “shall be decided by this group”.

After all, Ratcliffe is an expert in these intricate footballing stuff, leveraging his previous experience in petrochemicals and yachting. Above all he remains incredibly rich, and it is known, the wealthy are the best of us: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply better. Whom else would you trust to manage an enlightened programme of austerity, the construction of a new stadium that appears a lot like an abstract design, the acquisition of a new striker?

The Modern Football Order: Executives Over Managers

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels football. Historically, teams mistakenly entrusted big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, talent spotters – players themselves. Maybe previously feasible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with ideas and energy to go into a club and implement their plan through to completion. But how many companies have these guys established? How many large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to place genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the guys with impressive professional resumes. It is wiser to determine the strategy by the directors and hire a coach who will adapt their offering to suit. If managers were once chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not really creating the product, but still finally accountable should it be delivered cold or fails of the box.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly less about crafting the philosophy and more about selling it: the receptionist of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they can do little to change. Enzo Maresca takes a squad of very young players into Europe and secures two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for talking. Wilfried Nancy finds his standing damaged while those individuals who hired him continue to make errors another day.

The Neoliberal Football: Accountability for the Few

And perhaps on some microcosmic level this is simply neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a privileged overclass who are infallible, whose choices are always untouchable, whose errors can always be resolved by sacking without justification. Appoint the 3-4-3 coach only to fire him for playing excessively that system. Hire the project manager and later bin him for taking excessive time. And most importantly show gratitude; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.