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Turns out he endured defeat by Grimsby. He weathered an important European final against a particularly poor Tottenham teams for many years. He withstood home defeats against domestic rivals, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, laying waste to the team's most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, labeling the squad the worst the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed a single opponent against whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to engage. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, like many a top-flight defender in Blackburn’s championship 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 intense pressure and formidable presence of one of England's top division's most feared football executives.

And frankly, this whole bruising episode seems to paint the director in a whole new light. It may have been tempting, based on his nine months of experience at Southampton, to view Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position as much to his friendship with ex-colleague a fellow executive as any verifiable talent. How mistaken everyone was. By masterfully outsmarting United’s feted manager, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless Dan Ashworth earlier, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated to be among the sport’s true generals: a tactical intellect that United’s mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

The Strategic Clash Over Formation and Ideology

To illustrate, this was Jason Wilcox , after having been part of the leadership that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim in the first place, was instrumental in trying to persuade Amorim to abandon his favored formation. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties were resisted. However, these judgements hold greater authority when issued by a man of a man the unimpeachable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, holder of three England caps and a role in a title-winning side from 31 years ago.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his reasoning to the rest of us. Maybe one day questions may arise why Amorim is departing with full compensation, with no penalty clause activated. The director seldom speaks in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers of this sport – men like him – function at a level beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, probably all we would hear would be ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Power Behind Command

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, merely executing the commands of his superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has emphasized his desire for a four-man defense. It is reported, the owner has also proposed deploying the forward in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for United to embrace data science and metrics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit early in his minority ownership, he announced that the team's approach of play “will be decided by this group”.

After all, Ratcliffe is an expert in these intricate footballing stuff, drawing from his background in petrochemicals and sailing. Above all he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, sagacious, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Whom else would you trust to manage 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 New Soccer Hierarchy: Executives Over Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. Historically, teams mistakenly delegated big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – even footballers. Maybe previously feasible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to go into an organization and implement their plan through to completion. But how many businesses have these guys set up? How many mass redundancies have they managed? Far preferable to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with impressive professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the strategy in the boardroom and hire someone who will adapt their methods accordingly. If coaches were formerly chefs, they are now more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not creating the product, but still finally accountable should it be delivered cold or fails to meet standards.

Nowadays, a coach's role has become not about defining the vision and more about selling it: the receptionist of the operation, the visible figurehead for a club they have minimal power to change. Enzo Maresca leads a team of very young players into Europe and wins domestic cups, and effectively gets sacked for talking. A manager at Celtic sees his standing damaged whereas those individuals who hired him continue to make errors indefinitely.

The Neoliberal Football: Accountability Only for the Few

And perhaps in a small way this is simply corporate governance in action: the elevation of a privileged overclass who are infallible, whose choices are always untouchable, whose mistakes can invariably be resolved by sacking without explanation. Hire the 3-4-3 coach only to dismiss him for using too much 3-4-3. Bring in the project manager and then discard him for requiring too long. And most importantly be grateful; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for the latest summer signings, for the fact that the adults – however well qualified – are in charge.