🔗 Share this article

Transpired the manager could survive defeat by lower-league opposition. He weathered a decisive European final versus one of the worst Spurs sides for many years. He could survive losing at home to domestic rivals, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, undermining the team's best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, labeling his team the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed one adversary with whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to dance. If you challenge the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, like many a top-flight defender during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning 1994-95 season, the coach came at the executive and appears to have missed. Even the most distracted of readers will notice the paradoxical situation: a coach who often railed his squad for losing one-on-one duels crumbling when confronted by the intense pressure and formidable presence of a England's top division's most intimidating sporting directors.

And frankly, this whole painful saga seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been tempting, given his brief stint of experience at Southampton, to view him as little more than a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position largely to his friendship with ex-colleague a fellow executive as any demonstrable skill. How mistaken everyone was. In brilliantly outsmarting United’s feted head coach, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive before him, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated to be among football's true generals: a tactical intellect of which United’s mid-table rivals will now be rightly wary.

The Strategic Conflict Regarding System and Philosophy

For example, this was the director , after having been part of the leadership that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist the coach originally, was instrumental in trying to persuade him to abandon his favored formation. Unsurprisingly, these pleas faced pushback. However, these judgements hold greater authority when delivered by a man with the impeccable soccer background he possesses, a veteran of international appearances and a role in a championship team decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to outline his reasoning to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked why Amorim is departing with full compensation, without any compensation reduction clause activated. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, and with very good reason. The real thinkers of this sport – individuals such as Jason Wilcox – simply operate on a plane beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, probably we would perceive would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Wanting is not quite the same as being ready to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Authority In Command

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we overlook the true genius behind the modern United throne. The director is, in reality, merely executing the commands of his ultimate line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has emphasized his desire for a four-man defense. According to reports, Ratcliffe has also suggested playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for United to embrace data science and analytics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit early in his minority ownership, he announced that the team's approach of play “shall be decided by this group”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical football matters, drawing from his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Most importantly he remains immensely wealthy, and it is known, the rich are the best of us: more perceptive, more wise, strategically brilliant, fundamentally superior. Who else would you trust to manage an enlightened programme of austerity, the building of a modern arena that appears similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

A New Soccer Order: Directors Above Managers

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. Historically, clubs foolishly entrusted big footballing decisions to low-level employees such as coaches, talent spotters – even footballers. Maybe previously feasible for a young, visionary coach with a philosophy and drive to join a club and implement their plan through to completion. But how many companies have these guys established? How many large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the guys with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to determine the strategy in the boardroom and appoint a coach who will adapt their methods to suit. If managers were formerly chefs, they are now more like Deliveroo drivers: not responsible for the product, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives poorly or leaks out of the box.

In the meantime, a coach's role has become less 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 influence. Enzo Maresca leads a team of very young players into the Champions League and wins two medium-sized trophies, and essentially gets sacked for speaking out. Wilfried Nancy finds his reputation ruined while the people who appointed him continue to make errors indefinitely.

The Neoliberal Football: Accountability Only for the Coaches

And possibly in a small way this is simply neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a gilded overclass who are infallible, whose choices remain untouchable, whose errors can invariably be resolved by sacking without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then fire him for using too much 3-4-3. Bring in the project manager and then discard him for requiring too long. And above all be grateful; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for your new summer signings, for the fact that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.