The Coach's Fatal Mistake? Taking On The Executives and an Infallible Leadership Tier

Iturns out Ruben Amorim was able to withstand losing against lower-league opposition. Survive an important continental showpiece against one of the worst Tottenham teams in living memory. He withstood home defeats to domestic rivals, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, squandering some of the club’s most promising academy products, a poor winning percentage, labeling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed one adversary with whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to tango. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

And frankly, this entire painful saga seems to paint the director in a different perspective. It may have been easy, given his nine months of experience at Southampton, to regard him as little more than a drudge within the club's structure: a man whose appointment was due largely to his friendship with his former boss Omar Berrada as any demonstrable skill. How mistaken everyone was. By masterfully outsmarting the club's celebrated head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, he has proved himself as one of the sport’s strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which the club's mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

The Strategic Clash Regarding System and Ideology

For example, it was the director , after having been part of the hierarchy that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist the coach in the first place, played a key role in trying to persuade Amorim to abandon his favored formation. Unsurprisingly, these pleas met a certain resistance. But perhaps such directives carry more weight when delivered from the mouth with the impeccable soccer background he possesses, holder of three England caps and a role in a championship team decades past.

Perhaps in time he might agree to outline his reasoning publicly. Maybe one day questions may arise regarding why the coach is departing with a full payout, with no compensation reduction clause in place. The director speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals in football – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate on a plane exceeding our mundane comprehension. Were he to speak, most likely all we would hear would be ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Authority Behind the Throne

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, after all, simply carrying out the commands of his line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has made very clear his preference for a back four. It is reported, Ratcliffe has also proposed deploying the forward in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace data science and metrics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting soon after his investment, he declared that the team's approach of play “shall be determined by this group”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical footballing stuff, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and sailing. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the rich are the best of us: more insightful, more wise, strategically brilliant, simply superior. Whom else would you trust to manage an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the construction of a new stadium that appears similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A New Football Hierarchy: Executives Above Coaches

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels football. For decades, clubs foolishly entrusted big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – even footballers. Perhaps it was once feasible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to join a club and see their vision supported to fruition. But how many companies have such individuals set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they managed? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the guys with impressive LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to decide the strategy by the directors and hire someone who can tailor their methods accordingly. If coaches were once chefs, they have become more like Deliveroo drivers: not creating the food, yet finally accountable if it arrives poorly or leaks out to meet standards.

In the meantime, a coach's role is increasingly not about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the public face of an organisation they can do little to change. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into Europe and wins two medium-sized trophies, and essentially gets sacked for talking. Wilfried Nancy finds his standing damaged while the people who appointed him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Neoliberal Game: Responsibility Only for the Coaches

And possibly on some microcosmic level this represents corporate governance at work: the elevation of a privileged elite who are infallible, whose choices are always untouchable, whose mistakes can invariably be sacked away without explanation. Hire the 3-4-3 coach only to dismiss them for using excessively that system. Hire the process guy and then discard him for taking too long. And above all show gratitude; for the incremental season ticket price rises, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.