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Itranspired Ruben Amorim could survive losing against Grimsby. Survive losing a crucial European final against a particularly poor Tottenham teams for many years. He withstood losing at home against West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, laying waste to the team's best academy products, the 32% win rate, calling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed a single opponent with whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to engage. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a top-flight right-back during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning 1994-95 season, Amorim came at the executive and appears to have failed. The most casual observer will notice the paradoxical situation: a manager who frequently berated at his players for losing individual battles crumbling when confronted by the white heat and animal charisma of a the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

And frankly, this entire painful saga appears to portray the director in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been tempting, based on his brief stint in a similar role at Southampton, to view him as little more than a functionary in the United exoskeleton: a man who owed his position as much to his friendship with ex-colleague a fellow executive rather than any demonstrable skill. How wrong everyone was. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the unfortunate a previous executive before him, he has proved himself to be among football's true generals: a strategic mind of which United’s competitors are now justifiably concerned.

The Strategic Clash Regarding Formation and Ideology

For example, this was the director , after having been part of the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim in the first place, was instrumental in attempting to convince Amorim to abandon his favored 3-4-3. Naturally, these pleas were resisted. However, these judgements hold greater authority when delivered by a man with the impeccable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his reasoning publicly. Perhaps at some point questions may arise why Amorim is departing with a full payout, without any penalty clause activated. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals in football – individuals such as Jason Wilcox – function at a level exceeding our prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, most likely we would perceive would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Wanting is not quite equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Power In Command

Naturally, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we overlook the true genius behind the modern United throne. Jason Wilcox is, in reality, simply carrying out the directives of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has emphasized his preference for a back four. According to reports, the owner has also suggested deploying the forward in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace analytics and analytics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit early in his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style to football “shall be determined in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical football matters, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he remains immensely wealthy, and it is known, the rich are superior: more perceptive, more wise, more tactically astute, fundamentally better. Who else could one trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a modern arena that appears a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

The New Football Order: Executives Above Coaches

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels football. For decades, clubs foolishly entrusted major sporting choices to low-level employees such as coaches, scouts – even footballers. Maybe previously feasible for a young, innovative manager with ideas and energy to join a club and see their vision through to completion. But how many companies have these guys established? How many mass redundancies have they managed? Far preferable to invest the real power where it belongs: the leadership tier, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with impressive professional resumes. It is wiser to determine the strategy by the directors and appoint someone who will adapt their offering accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they are now more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not really responsible for the product, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or leaks out of the box.

Nowadays, a coach's role has become not about crafting the philosophy and more about selling it: the receptionist of the operation, the public face for a club they have minimal power to change. Enzo Maresca takes a squad of very young players into Europe and wins two medium-sized trophies, and essentially gets sacked for talking. Wilfried Nancy sees his reputation ruined whereas those individuals who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

The Neoliberal Game: Accountability Only for the Few

And possibly on some microcosmic level this is simply neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a gilded elite who are infallible, whose choices remain untouchable, whose mistakes can invariably be sacked away without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then fire them for using excessively 3-4-3. Hire the project manager and then discard them for taking too long. And above all show gratitude; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the adults – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.