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Transpired the manager endured a loss to lower-league opposition. Survive a decisive continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He withstood losing at home to domestic rivals, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, squandering the team's most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling his team the poorest in Manchester United history. But there was a single opponent with whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to tango. You come at Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, like many a top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s title-winning campaign, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and appears to have failed. Even the most casual observer will notice the irony here: a coach who often railed his squad for losing one-on-one duels crumbling when confronted by the white heat and formidable presence of one of the Premier League’s most intimidating sporting directors.

And frankly, this entire painful saga seems to paint the director in a whole new light. It may have been tempting, based on his brief stint of experience at Southampton, to regard him as merely a drudge in the United exoskeleton: an individual whose appointment was due largely to his friendship with his former boss a fellow executive as any demonstrable skill. How wrong we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring United’s feted manager, just as he bested the unfortunate Dan Ashworth earlier, he has demonstrated as one of the sport’s strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that the club's competitors will now be rightly wary.

A Strategic Clash Regarding Formation and Philosophy

To illustrate, this was the director , after having been part of the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim originally, played a key role in trying to persuade him to ditch his beloved formation. Unsurprisingly, these pleas were resisted. But perhaps such directives carry more weight when issued from the mouth with the unimpeachable football pedigree he possesses, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a championship team from 31 years ago.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox might agree to outline his reasoning to the rest of us. Maybe one day questions may arise why Amorim is walking away with a full payout, with no compensation reduction clause activated. The director speaks rarely publicly, and with very good reason. The real thinkers of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate at a level beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, most likely all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Wanting is not the same as being ready to receive.

The Ultimate Authority Behind the Throne

Naturally, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we overlook the true genius behind the modern United throne. The director is, in reality, merely executing the directives of his line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has emphasized his preference for a four-man defense. It is reported, Ratcliffe has also proposed deploying the forward as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for United to embrace data science and analytics. Per reports, during a leadership summit early in his investment, he announced that United’s style of play “will be decided by this group”.

After all, Ratcliffe is an expert in these intricate football matters, drawing from his background in industry and yachting. Most importantly he is immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the rich are superior: more insightful, sagacious, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Whom else could one trust to oversee an enlightened programme of austerity, the building of a modern arena that appears similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of a new striker?

A Modern Soccer Hierarchy: Executives Above Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing in top-tier football. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees such as coaches, scouts – even footballers. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to join an organization and implement their plan through to completion. Yet how many businesses have such individuals set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Far preferable to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with impressive LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to determine the strategy by the directors and appoint someone who will adapt their methods to suit. If managers were formerly chefs, they have become more like delivery personnel: not creating the food, yet finally accountable if it arrives cold or fails of the box.

Nowadays, a coach's role has become less about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the receptionist on the front desk, the visible figurehead of an organisation they have minimal power to change. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into Europe and wins domestic cups, and essentially gets sacked for talking. A manager at Celtic finds his standing damaged while those individuals who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Football: Responsibility Only for the Coaches

And possibly in a small way this represents neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a privileged elite who can never be wrong, whose decisions remain sacrosanct, whose errors can invariably be sacked away without justification. Hire the system coach only to dismiss them for using too much that system. Hire the project manager and then bin him for requiring excessive time. And most importantly be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the reality that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.