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Transpired he was able to withstand defeat by Grimsby. He weathered a decisive continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Tottenham teams for many years. He withstood home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, squandering the team's most promising homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, calling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed one adversary with whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to tango. You come at the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Regrettably, similar to numerous Premiership defender during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning campaign, Amorim took on Jason Wilcox and appears to have missed. The most casual observer can see the irony here: a coach who often railed his squad for failing in one-on-one duels succumbing in the face of the white heat and formidable presence of a the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

In truth, this entire painful saga seems to paint the director in a different perspective. It may have been easy, given his brief stint of experience at Southampton, to view Jason Wilcox as little more than a drudge in the United exoskeleton: a man whose appointment was due as much to his friendship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How mistaken everyone was. By masterfully outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated head coach, just as he bested the hapless Dan Ashworth before him, he has proved himself to be among football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that the club's competitors will now be rightly wary.

A Strategic Conflict Over System & Philosophy

To illustrate, this was the director who being involved in the hierarchy that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim in the first place, played a key role in trying to persuade Amorim to ditch his beloved 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these pleas were resisted. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when issued by a man with the impeccable football pedigree he possesses, a veteran of international appearances and a contributor to a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually he may be persuaded to outline his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked regarding why the coach is departing with a full payout, without any penalty clause activated. The director speaks rarely publicly, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – function on a plane exceeding our prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, probably we would perceive would be high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not quite the same as being prepared to receive.

The Ultimate Authority Behind the Throne

But of course, by focusing our attention on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. The director is, in reality, merely executing the directives of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has made very clear his desire for a four-man defense. It is reported, the owner has also suggested deploying the forward as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for United to embrace data science and analytics. Per reports, in an executive meeting early in his minority ownership, he declared that the team's approach to football “shall be determined by this group”.

Ultimately, Sir Jim is an expert in this technical footballing stuff, drawing from his background in industry and sailing. Above all he is incredibly rich, and as we all know, the rich are superior: more perceptive, more wise, strategically brilliant, simply better. Who else could one trust to oversee an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the building of a new stadium that looks a lot like an abstract design, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

The New Soccer Hierarchy: Directors Over Managers

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing in top-tier football. Historically, clubs foolishly entrusted major sporting choices to low-level employees like managers, talent spotters – even footballers. Perhaps it was once feasible for a young, visionary coach with ideas and energy to go into an organization and see their vision through to completion. Yet how many companies have such individuals established? What number of mass redundancies have they overseen? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to decide the tactics by the directors and appoint someone who will adapt their offering to suit. If coaches were once chefs, they have become more like delivery personnel: not really responsible for the food, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or fails of the box.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly less about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the receptionist on the front desk, the visible figurehead for a club they can do little to influence. Enzo Maresca leads a team of literal children into the Champions League and wins two medium-sized trophies, and essentially is dismissed for talking. Wilfried Nancy finds his standing damaged while the people who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

The Neoliberal Football: Accountability Only for the Coaches

And perhaps in a small way this is simply corporate governance in action: the elevation of a privileged elite who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always untouchable, whose mistakes can always be sacked away without explanation. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then fire them for using too much 3-4-3. Hire the project manager and later discard him for taking too long. And most importantly be grateful; for your modest season ticket price rises, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.