🔗 Share this article

Tbecame clear the manager was able to withstand a loss to lower-league opposition. He weathered losing a crucial continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive losing at home to domestic rivals, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, squandering some of the club’s most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling the squad the worst the club has ever seen. But there was one adversary with whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to tango. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, similar to numerous top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s championship 1994-95 season, Amorim came at Jason Wilcox and seems to have failed. Even the most casual observer will notice the paradoxical situation: a coach who frequently berated at his players for failing in individual battles crumbling in the face of the intense pressure and animal charisma of a England's top division's most feared football executives.

And frankly, this whole painful saga appears to portray Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his nine months in a similar role at Southampton, to view him as little more than a drudge in the United exoskeleton: a man who owed his position largely to his friendship with his former boss a fellow executive as any verifiable talent. How mistaken we all were. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring United’s feted manager, just as he bested the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, he has proved himself to be among the sport’s strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that the club's competitors are now rightly wary.

A Strategic Clash Over System & Philosophy

To illustrate, it was the director who being involved in the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim in the first place, was instrumental in attempting to convince Amorim to ditch his beloved formation. Unsurprisingly, these pleas faced pushback. But perhaps these judgements hold greater authority when issued by a man with the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a championship team from 31 years ago.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to outline his reasoning publicly. Perhaps at some point questions may arise regarding why the coach is walking away with full compensation, without any penalty clause activated. The director speaks rarely publicly, and with very good reason. The real thinkers of this sport – individuals such as Jason Wilcox – function at a level beyond our own prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, most likely all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not quite the same as being ready to comprehend it.

An Supreme Power Behind Command

Naturally, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. The director is, in reality, simply carrying out the commands of his ultimate line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has emphasized his preference for a four-man defense. 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. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit early in his investment, he announced that United’s style to football “shall be determined by this group”.

Ultimately, Sir Jim is a specialist in this technical footballing stuff, leveraging his previous experience in industry and sailing. Most importantly he remains incredibly rich, and it is known, the rich are superior: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply better. Who else would you trust to oversee an enlightened programme of austerity, the building of a new stadium that looks similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

The New Football Hierarchy: Executives Above Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing in top-tier of the game. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – even footballers. Maybe previously feasible for a young, innovative manager with ideas and energy to join a club and implement their plan through to completion. But how many businesses have such individuals set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Far preferable to place the real power where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to decide the strategy by the directors and hire someone who can tailor their offering to suit. If managers were once chefs, they are now more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not really responsible for the product, yet finally accountable if it arrives poorly or fails to meet standards.

Nowadays, a coach's role is increasingly not about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the public face of an organisation they can do little to influence. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into Europe and wins domestic cups, and effectively is dismissed for speaking out. Wilfried Nancy sees his standing damaged while those individuals who appointed him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Football: Responsibility for the Coaches

And perhaps in a small way this is simply neoliberalism at work: the rise of a gilded elite who can never be wrong, whose choices are always sacrosanct, whose errors can always be sacked away without justification. Hire the system coach and then dismiss him for playing excessively that system. Hire the process guy and then bin them for requiring too long. And most importantly show gratitude; for the incremental season ticket price rises, for the latest summer signings, for the fact that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.