🔗 Share this article

Itranspired he could survive losing against lower-league opposition. He weathered an important continental showpiece against a particularly poor Tottenham teams for many years. He could survive losing at home against West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, his rigid approach, squandering the team's most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, labeling his team the poorest in Manchester United history. Yet, there existed a single opponent against whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to dance. If you challenge the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Regrettably, similar to numerous top-flight right-back during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning 1994-95 season, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and seems to have missed. 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 formidable presence of a England's top division's most feared sporting directors.

And frankly, this whole bruising episode seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. It may have been easy, based on his nine months of experience at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as little more than a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual whose appointment was due largely to his friendship with ex-colleague a fellow executive as any verifiable talent. How mistaken we all were. By masterfully outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated head coach, just as he bested the unfortunate Dan Ashworth earlier, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated as one of the sport’s strategic masterminds: a strategic mind of which the club's mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

A Tactical Clash Regarding Formation and Philosophy

For example, it was the director who being involved in the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim originally, was instrumental in attempting to convince him to ditch his favored formation. Naturally, these entreaties met a certain resistance. However, such directives carry more weight when issued from the mouth of a man the unimpeachable soccer background he possesses, holder of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to explain his reasoning publicly. Maybe one day questions may arise regarding why the coach is departing with full compensation, without any penalty clause activated. The director speaks rarely in public, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate on a plane exceeding our prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, probably all we would hear is a series of high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Wanting is not the same as being ready to receive.

The Ultimate Authority Behind Command

Naturally, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we overlook the real power behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, after all, simply carrying out the directives of his line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has emphasized his desire for a four-man defense. It is reported, the owner has also suggested deploying the forward in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for United to adopt data science and metrics. Per reports, in an executive meeting early in his investment, he declared that the team's approach to football “shall be determined by this group”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical football matters, drawing from his previous experience in industry and sailing. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, more wise, strategically brilliant, fundamentally superior. Whom else would you trust to oversee a strategic plan of austerity, the construction of a new stadium that appears a lot like an abstract design, the acquisition of a new striker?

A New Soccer Hierarchy: Executives Over Managers

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing in top-tier football. Historically, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees like managers, scouts – even footballers. Maybe previously possible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with ideas and energy to join a club and see their vision through to completion. But how many companies have such individuals established? What number of mass redundancies have they overseen? Better by far to place genuine authority where it belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to determine the strategy by the directors and hire someone who can tailor their offering to suit. If managers were once chefs, they have become more akin to delivery personnel: not responsible for the product, yet finally accountable if it arrives cold or leaks out of the box.

In the meantime, their job has become not 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. Enzo Maresca takes a squad of very young players into the Champions League and secures two medium-sized trophies, and effectively is dismissed for speaking out. Wilfried Nancy sees his standing damaged while the people who hired him live to blunder another day.

The Neoliberal Football: Accountability Only for the Coaches

And possibly on some microcosmic level this represents neoliberalism at work: the rise of a privileged elite who are infallible, whose decisions remain untouchable, whose mistakes can always be resolved by sacking without justification. Hire the system coach and then fire him for playing too much that system. Hire the process guy and later bin him for taking too long. And most importantly show gratitude; for the incremental season ticket price rises, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.