🔗 Share this article

Iturns out the manager could survive losing against Grimsby. He weathered an important European final against one of the worst Spurs sides in living memory. He could survive losing at home against domestic rivals, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, laying waste to some of the club’s most promising homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, calling his team the poorest the club has ever seen. But there was a single opponent with whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to engage. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, like many a top-flight right-back during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning 1994-95 season, the coach came at 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 failing in individual battles crumbling in the face of the intense pressure and animal charisma of one of England's top division's most intimidating sporting directors.

And frankly, this whole bruising episode seems to paint the director in a whole new light. It may have been easy, given his brief stint in a similar role at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as little more than a functionary within the club's structure: an individual who owed his position largely to his friendship with ex-colleague a fellow executive rather than any verifiable talent. How mistaken we all were. In brilliantly outsmarting United’s feted manager, just as he bested the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, he has demonstrated as one of football's true generals: a strategic mind that United’s mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

A Tactical Conflict Over System & Ideology

To illustrate, it was the director , after having been part of the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim in the first place, played a key role in attempting to convince Amorim to abandon his beloved 3-4-3. Naturally, these pleas met a certain resistance. But perhaps these judgements hold greater authority when issued from the mouth with the unimpeachable soccer background he possesses, a veteran of international appearances and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to outline his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point questions may arise regarding why the coach is walking away with full compensation, without any compensation reduction clause activated. But Jason Wilcox seldom speaks in public, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals of this sport – individuals such as him – simply operate at a level beyond our own mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, probably all we would hear is a series of ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not equivalent to being ready to receive.

An Ultimate Authority Behind the Throne

But of course, in training our focus on the sporting director we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, in reality, merely executing the directives of his ultimate line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has emphasized his preference for a back four. It is reported, Ratcliffe has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for United to embrace data science and metrics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit soon after his investment, he declared that the team's approach of play “will be determined in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical footballing stuff, drawing from his previous experience in industry and yachting. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the wealthy are superior: more perceptive, more wise, more tactically astute, fundamentally superior. Whom else would you trust to oversee an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the construction of a modern arena that appears a lot like an abstract design, the signing of a new striker?

The Modern Football Order: Directors Over Managers

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels football. For decades, teams mistakenly entrusted big footballing decisions to low-level employees like managers, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with ideas and energy to join an organization and implement their plan supported to fruition. Yet how many companies have these guys set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they managed? Far preferable to place genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the tactics in the boardroom and appoint someone who can tailor their methods accordingly. If coaches were formerly chefs, they have become more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not creating the product, yet finally accountable if it arrives cold or leaks out to meet standards.

Nowadays, a coach's role has become less about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative 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 domestic cups, and effectively is dismissed for talking. A manager at Celtic sees his reputation ruined whereas those individuals who appointed him live to blunder another day.

A Modern Corporate Game: Accountability for the Coaches

And perhaps in a small way this is simply neoliberalism in action: the rise of a gilded overclass who can never be wrong, whose choices are always untouchable, whose errors can always be resolved by sacking without explanation. Appoint the 3-4-3 coach only to fire him for using too much that system. Hire the process guy and later bin him for requiring excessive time. And above all be grateful; for your modest season ticket price rises, for the latest summer signings, for the fact that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.