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Itbecame clear the manager could survive a loss to lower-league opposition. Survive a decisive European final versus one of the worst Tottenham teams for many years. He withstood home defeats to domestic rivals, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, laying waste to some of the club’s best academy products, the 32% win rate, calling the squad the worst in Manchester United history. But there was a single opponent against whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to dance. If you challenge Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s championship 1994-95 season, Amorim came at the executive and seems to have failed. The most casual observer can see the paradoxical situation: a coach who often railed at his players for failing in one-on-one duels crumbling when confronted by the intense pressure and animal charisma of a the Premier League’s most intimidating football executives.

And frankly, this whole bruising episode seems to paint the director in a whole new light. It may have been tempting, given his brief stint of experience at Southampton, to view him as little more than a drudge within the club's structure: an individual who owed his position largely to his close relationship with his former boss Omar Berrada as any verifiable talent. How mistaken everyone was. In brilliantly outsmarting the club's celebrated manager, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate Dan Ashworth earlier, he has proved himself to be among football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind of which the club's mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

A Tactical Clash Regarding Formation & Philosophy

For example, this was Jason Wilcox who having been part of the leadership that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist the coach originally, played a key role in attempting to convince Amorim to ditch his beloved 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties met a certain resistance. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when issued by a man with the unimpeachable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his reasoning to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point questions may arise why Amorim is walking away with a full payout, without any compensation reduction clause activated. The director speaks rarely in public, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals of this sport – individuals such as him – simply operate on a plane exceeding our mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, probably all we would hear would be ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not the same as being prepared to comprehend it.

An Supreme Power Behind the Throne

Naturally, in training our focus on the sporting director we are obscuring the real power behind the modern United throne. Jason Wilcox is, in reality, simply carrying out the directives of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has emphasized his desire 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 embrace analytics and metrics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit soon after his minority ownership, he declared that United’s style to football “shall be determined by this group”.

After all, Sir Jim is a specialist in these intricate football matters, leveraging his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Above all he remains immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the wealthy are the best of us: more insightful, more wise, strategically brilliant, simply better. Who else would you trust to oversee an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the construction of a modern arena that looks a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A New Soccer Order: Directors Above Managers

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing in top-tier football. For decades, clubs foolishly entrusted big footballing decisions to low-level employees such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once feasible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and drive to go into an organization and see their vision through to completion. But how many companies have these guys set up? What number of mass redundancies have they managed? Better by far to invest the real power where it belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to determine the tactics by the directors and appoint someone who will adapt their offering accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they are now more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not really responsible for the product, but still ultimately answerable should it be delivered cold or leaks out to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly not about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to change. Enzo Maresca leads a team of very young players into the Champions League and secures two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for talking. A manager at Celtic finds his standing damaged while those individuals who hired him continue to make errors another day.

A Modern Corporate Football: Responsibility for the Coaches

And possibly in a small way this represents neoliberalism in action: the rise of a gilded overclass who can never be wrong, whose decisions remain sacrosanct, whose errors can always be sacked away without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach only to fire them for playing too much that system. Bring in the process guy and later bin him for taking excessive time. And above all be grateful; for the incremental season ticket price rises, for the latest summer signings, for the reality that the grownups – however well qualified – remain in control.