When Manchester United embarked upon this season full of fresh hope and optimism, there was an unexpected note of caution from one of the best executives in the game. “It’s clear they don’t have a process,” the executive said of Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s new regime early in the season.
It was a stark pronouncement at odds with the consensus that Ruben Amorim, with a proper pre-season to bed in his tactical system and exciting signings, would be able to demonstrate his considerable abilities unencumbered by the hospital pass he had been given on his appointment in November 2024.
And yet it was United’s recruitment of Amorim that led this particular experienced hand to doubt the direction of United under Ratcliffe. Despite all the rhetoric of a brave new world after the Glazer handover of executive power, it was clear to some that United were embarking on the same institutional failures of the past in their choice of manager.
Ratcliffe was audibly excited on appointing Amorim, according to one insider, and the chief executive, Omar Berrada, who had driven the recruitment, and director of football, Jason Wilcox, shared his confidence, though there was a prescient cautionary note from Dan Ashworth, then the sporting director, who would depart a month later in the fallout. Though United say everyone was behind the Amorim appointment once it was made, Ashworth was initially a dissenting voice, warning that United needed to rebuild the squad and infrastructure over a number of years and that a safer appointment was preferable. Crucially, he pointed out, they didn’t have the squad to play 3-4-3. Ashworth’s scepticism was shared among analysts at rival clubs. Tottenham and Liverpool had assessed Amorim as replacements for Antonio Conte and Jürgen Klopp respectively and passed. Now it looks as though Ashworth was sacked for declaring the emperor naked.
Appointing a manager is the hardest part of a football executive’s job and there is no fail-safe formula. Even good clubs get it wrong choosing a coach, partly because data is less certain than when analysing a player.
“We’re not quite there on data on managers,” said the executive. “It’s descriptive rather than predictive, because managers don’t directly control what happens on the pitch. But what data can say is: 1) Have they done better than expected in their league? 2) Does the prospective manager fit the club profile? By which I mean, what is his budget compared to other teams in his league? If he overachieved with a small budget, that’s not necessarily the skill set for Manchester United. 3) Does the club need to develop young players and has he demonstrated that? 4) How does he want to play and does that suit our style?”
The hazard lights should really have been flashing frantically regarding Amorim on points 1 and 4. The executive added: “Amorim was one of the big names out there available but what has he achieved compared to expectations? Sporting Lisbon had a great time and I’m not saying he wasn’t part of their success but Benfica and Porto had their problems, it’s an easy league and Sporting’s title win was overhyped because of special circumstances. He was a good, young coach doing as well as you would expect. Amorim left and Sporting still won the league last season. Maybe it was the players?”
But the biggest warning sign should have come in his tactical intransigency, which is what ultimately caused the fallout with Wilcox over the weekend. “Amorim really falls down on point 4. Pragmatism is underrated at the top level. Have a system but if it’s not working, you have to make some changes for the short term. There is no right answer and fundamentalists aren’t good. If United asked [in interview]: ‘Will you change 3-4-3?’ and he said ‘No’, that should have been their red flag and they should have considered different managers.”
Clubs have been swayed by the magic bullet of a magical tactical system ever since Pep Guardiola revolutionised the game at Barcelona between 2008 and 2012. But data suggests, unsurprisingly, that the quality of players is much more relevant to achieving success than any tactical tweaks. Analysis of Guardiola’s revolutionary tactics sometimes doesn’t take account of the fact that throughout his career he has also had access to the best players. “Good coaches make a team 10% better and a bad one 50% worse,” is a line attributed to the esteemed former Juventus coach Giovanni Trapattoni and seems a more realistic assessment of the situation.
“Amorim has fallen into the trap of most managers thinking that it’s his system and tactics which are the cause of success and forgotten the basics: play the best players in their best positions,” said the executive. “Managers are egomaniacs but they have to be egomaniacs to stand in front of young men earning so much and hold the room. You have to get players thinking you are a genius. The problem is they then believe that they are.”
In some part, Ratcliffe has acknowledged the systemic culture failure at United, declaring that United’s data analysis was in the “last century” shortly after the Amorim appointment, then appointing Michael Sansoni from the Mercedes Formula One team he part-owns as director of data last April. Clearly outsiders sometimes can see an industry’s failings more clearly than myopic insiders and yet it remains a brave move to appoint someone with no football experience to such a key role. Experienced data analysts have noted Sansoni posting praise for his department on LinkedIn less than a year into the job. And it hasn’t gone unnoticed that unnamed United sources recently declared that their data department was now reckoned to be among the top four teams, which would put them in a league with Brighton and Brentford, both run by acknowledged industry-leading data masterminds who also have decades of football experience. It is a bold claim, ironically unsupported by any data.
Berrada and Wilcox are in the line of fire having called Amorim so badly wrong. Now the spotlight turns on Sansoni and his “top four” data department. “How do you appoint the next manager when you got the last one so wrong? United has been one reactive lurch after another,” said one source close to the club. Two months ago United were backing Amorim on his one-year anniversary in the job vowing there would be no return to the “rinse and repeat” sackings of the past.
And yet here they are again, stuck in the same cycle as ever.
