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Transpired he was able to withstand a loss to Grimsby. He weathered a decisive continental showpiece against a particularly poor Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive home defeats to domestic rivals, finishing 15th, an unwavering system, undermining some of the club’s best homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, calling the squad the poorest in Manchester United history. Yet, there existed a single opponent with whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to dance. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s championship 1994-95 season, Amorim came at Jason Wilcox and seems to have failed. The most distracted of readers can see the paradoxical situation: a manager who frequently berated at his players for losing individual battles crumbling when confronted by the white heat and animal charisma of one of the Premier League’s most feared sporting directors.

In truth, this entire painful saga seems to paint Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his brief stint in a similar role with the Saints, to view Jason Wilcox as merely a drudge in the United exoskeleton: a man who owed his position largely to his friendship with his former boss Omar Berrada rather than any verifiable talent. How mistaken everyone was. In brilliantly outmanoeuvring United’s feted manager, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated to be among the sport’s strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which the club's mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

The Strategic Clash Over Formation and Philosophy

For example, this was the director , after being involved in the leadership that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach originally, played a key role in attempting to convince him to abandon his beloved 3-4-3. Naturally, these pleas faced pushback. However, such directives hold greater authority when issued by a man of a man the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, holder of three England caps and a role in a title-winning side from 31 years ago.

Maybe eventually he might agree to explain his reasoning to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, with no compensation reduction clause activated. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals in football – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate at a level beyond our own prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, most likely all we would hear is a series of ultrasonic blips and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not equivalent to being prepared to receive.

An Ultimate Authority Behind Command

Naturally, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we are obscuring the true genius behind the modern United throne. Jason Wilcox is, after all, simply carrying out the commands of his ultimate superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has emphasized his desire for a back four. It is reported, the owner has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to embrace data science and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting soon after his investment, he announced that the team's approach to football “shall be determined in this room”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is an expert in these intricate footballing stuff, drawing from his previous experience in petrochemicals and sailing. Most importantly he remains immensely wealthy, and it is known, the rich are superior: more perceptive, more wise, strategically brilliant, fundamentally better. Whom else would you trust to oversee a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a modern arena that looks a lot like an abstract design, the acquisition of a new striker?

The Modern Soccer Hierarchy: Executives Over Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. Historically, clubs foolishly delegated big footballing decisions to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Maybe previously possible for a young, innovative manager with ideas and energy to join an organization and see their vision supported to fruition. Yet how many businesses have these guys set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they managed? Better by far to place the real power where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the open-necked shirt brigade, the guys with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to decide the tactics by the directors and hire someone who will adapt their methods to suit. If managers were formerly chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not responsible for the product, but still ultimately answerable should it be delivered cold or leaks out to meet standards.

Nowadays, their job has become not about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the visible figurehead of an organisation they have minimal power to change. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of literal children into Europe and secures two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for talking. A manager at Celtic sees his standing damaged whereas those individuals who hired him live to blunder another day.

A Neoliberal Football: Accountability for the Few

And perhaps in a small way this represents corporate governance at work: the elevation of a gilded overclass who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always untouchable, whose mistakes can always be sacked away without explanation. Hire the system coach only to fire him for using excessively that system. Bring in the project manager and then bin him for requiring too long. And most importantly be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the reality that the adults – however well qualified – remain in control.