🔗 Share this article

Transpired Ruben Amorim could survive defeat by Grimsby. Survive losing a crucial continental showpiece versus a particularly poor Tottenham teams for many years. He withstood losing at home against domestic rivals, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, laying waste to the team's most promising homegrown talent, the 32% win rate, labeling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. But there was a single opponent with whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to tango. You come at the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, like many a Premiership right-back during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning campaign, the coach took on Jason Wilcox and seems to have failed. Even the most distracted of readers can see the paradoxical situation: a manager who frequently berated at his players for failing in individual battles crumbling in the face of the intense pressure and animal charisma of one of the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

In truth, this entire bruising episode seems to paint the director in a different perspective. It may have been tempting, based on his brief stint of experience at Southampton, to regard Jason Wilcox as merely a functionary within the club's structure: an individual who owed his position largely to his friendship with his former boss Omar Berrada rather than any verifiable talent. How wrong everyone was. By masterfully outmanoeuvring the club's celebrated manager, as he outmanoeuvred the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, he has demonstrated to be among football's true generals: a tactical intellect of which the club's mid-table rivals are now justifiably concerned.

A Strategic Conflict Regarding System and Ideology

To illustrate, this was Jason Wilcox who 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 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties met a certain resistance. However, these judgements hold greater authority when issued from the mouth with the unimpeachable soccer background he possesses, a veteran of international appearances and a contributor to a title-winning side from 31 years ago.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Maybe one day questions may arise why Amorim is departing with full compensation, with no penalty clause in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely publicly, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals in football – men like him – function on a plane beyond our own mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, probably all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Wanting is not the same as being ready to receive.

An Ultimate Power In the Throne

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the true genius behind the modern United throne. Jason Wilcox is, in reality, merely executing the commands of his ultimate superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has emphasized his preference for a back four. According to reports, the owner has also suggested playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to embrace data science and analytics. Per reports, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he announced that the team's approach of play “will be decided by this group”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical football matters, leveraging his background in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he is immensely wealthy, and as we all know, the wealthy are superior: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply superior. Who else would you trust to manage a strategic plan of cost-cutting, the construction of a modern arena that appears similar to an abstract design, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

A Modern Football Order: Executives Over Managers

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent at the elite levels of the game. For decades, clubs foolishly entrusted big footballing decisions to low-level employees like managers, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once 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 businesses have these guys set up? What number of large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to invest the real power where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with impressive professional resumes. Better by far to determine the tactics by the directors and appoint someone who will adapt their offering to suit. If managers were once chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not creating the food, yet finally accountable should it be delivered poorly or fails of the box.

Nowadays, a coach's role is increasingly less about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative on the front desk, the visible figurehead for a club they have minimal power to change. Enzo Maresca leads a team of very young players into Europe and wins domestic cups, and essentially is dismissed for talking. Wilfried Nancy sees his reputation ruined while the people who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Modern Corporate Game: Accountability for the Coaches

And possibly in a small way this represents neoliberalism at work: the elevation of a privileged overclass who can never be wrong, whose choices remain untouchable, whose mistakes can invariably be resolved by sacking without explanation. Appoint the system coach only to dismiss him for using excessively that system. Hire the process guy and later discard them for taking excessive time. And above all be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.