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Turns out he was able to withstand losing against lower-league opposition. Survive a decisive continental showpiece against one of the worst Spurs sides in living memory. He could survive losing at home against domestic rivals, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, undermining the team's best academy products, a poor winning percentage, calling his team the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed one adversary with whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, like many a Premiership right-back in Blackburn’s title-winning 1994-95 season, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and appears to have failed. Even the most casual observer can see the paradoxical situation: a coach who often railed his squad for losing individual battles crumbling when confronted by the white heat and formidable presence of a the Premier League’s most intimidating sporting directors.

And frankly, this whole bruising episode seems to paint the director in a different perspective. It may have been tempting, given his nine months of experience at Southampton, to regard him as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position largely to his friendship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada rather than any verifiable talent. How wrong everyone was. In brilliantly outsmarting United’s feted manager, just as he bested the hapless a previous executive before him, he has demonstrated to be among the sport’s strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which the club's competitors will now be rightly wary.

The Tactical Conflict Over Formation & Ideology

To illustrate, this was Jason Wilcox 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 beloved formation. Naturally, these entreaties were resisted. However, these judgements carry more weight when issued by a man with the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, holder of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to outline his thought processes publicly. Maybe one day questions may arise regarding why the coach is walking away with a full payout, without any compensation reduction clause in place. The director speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers of this sport – men like him – simply operate at a level beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, probably we would perceive would be high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not equivalent to 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. The director is, after all, merely executing the directives of his superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has emphasized his preference for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also proposed deploying the forward in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for United to adopt analytics and metrics. Per reports, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style of play “will be determined in this room”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is an expert in these intricate footballing stuff, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, sagacious, strategically brilliant, simply better. Whom else could one trust to oversee an enlightened programme of austerity, the building of a modern arena that appears a lot like an abstract design, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A Modern Soccer Hierarchy: Executives Over Coaches

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing in top-tier football. For decades, clubs foolishly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff such as coaches, talent spotters – even footballers. Perhaps it was once feasible for a young, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to join an organization and see their vision through to completion. But how many companies have such individuals established? What number of mass redundancies have they managed? Far preferable to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with impressive professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the tactics by the directors and hire someone who can tailor their offering to suit. If coaches were once chefs, they are now more like delivery personnel: not really responsible for the food, yet ultimately answerable should it be delivered poorly or leaks out of the box.

Nowadays, a coach's role has become less about defining the vision and more about selling it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the public face of an organisation they can do little to change. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of very young players into Europe and secures domestic cups, and essentially gets sacked for talking. A manager at Celtic sees his standing damaged whereas those individuals who hired him live to blunder another day.

The Modern Corporate Football: Accountability Only for the Coaches

And possibly on some microcosmic level this represents corporate governance in action: the elevation of a privileged overclass who are infallible, whose choices are always sacrosanct, whose errors can invariably be resolved by sacking without explanation. Hire the system coach only to dismiss him for using excessively that system. Bring in the project manager and then discard them for requiring excessive time. And above all be grateful; for your modest season ticket price rises, for your new player acquisitions, for the reality that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.