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Transpired the manager endured a loss to lower-league opposition. He weathered an important European final versus a particularly poor Tottenham teams for many years. He withstood home defeats against West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, undermining some of the club’s most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, labeling the squad the worst in Manchester United history. But there was one adversary with whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to engage. You come at the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous Premiership right-back during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning 1994-95 season, the coach took on Jason Wilcox and seems to have missed. Even the most distracted of readers can see the irony here: a coach who frequently berated at his players for failing in one-on-one duels succumbing in the face of the intense pressure and formidable presence of one of the Premier League’s most feared sporting directors.

In truth, this entire painful saga appears to portray the director in a different perspective. It may have been tempting, given his nine months of experience at Southampton, to view Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position as much to his friendship with his former boss Omar Berrada rather than any verifiable talent. How mistaken we all were. In brilliantly outsmarting United’s feted head coach, 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 will now be justifiably concerned.

The Tactical Clash Regarding Formation and Ideology

To illustrate, it was the director , after having been part of the leadership that appointed the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim in the first place, was instrumental in attempting to convince Amorim to ditch his beloved 3-4-3. Naturally, these entreaties met a certain resistance. But perhaps these judgements hold greater authority when issued by a man with the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, holder of three England caps and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually he might agree to explain his thought processes publicly. Perhaps at some point he might be asked regarding why the coach is departing with full compensation, with no penalty clause in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals in football – men like him – simply operate at a level exceeding our prosaic understanding. If he ever did speak, probably all we would hear would be ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not quite equivalent to being prepared to receive.

The Ultimate Authority Behind the Throne

But of course, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we overlook the real power behind the modern United throne. The director is, in reality, merely executing the commands of his superior the billionaire owner, who in private has emphasized his desire for a four-man defense. According to reports, the owner has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to adopt analytics and metrics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting soon after his investment, he declared that United’s style to football “shall be decided by this group”.

After all, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical football matters, leveraging his background in industry and sailing. Above all he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the rich are superior: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply superior. Whom else could one trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a modern arena that looks a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

A New Soccer Hierarchy: Executives Over Coaches

This represents a shift that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels football. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated big footballing decisions to low-level employees such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Maybe previously feasible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to go into an organization and implement their plan through to completion. But how many companies have such individuals established? What number of large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to place the real power where it belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the tactics in the boardroom and appoint someone who can tailor their offering to suit. If managers were once chefs, they are now more akin to Deliveroo drivers: not responsible for the product, yet ultimately answerable should it be delivered poorly or leaks out of the box.

In the meantime, their job has become less about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the visible figurehead of an organisation they have minimal power to influence. Enzo Maresca leads a team of literal children into the Champions League and secures domestic cups, and effectively gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic sees his reputation ruined while the people who hired him continue to make errors indefinitely.

A Modern Corporate Game: Accountability for the Few

And perhaps in a small way this represents neoliberalism in action: the rise of a privileged overclass who can never be wrong, whose choices are always untouchable, whose mistakes can always be resolved by sacking 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 discard him for taking excessive time. And above all show gratitude; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the fact that the adults – regardless of their expertise – are in charge.