🔗 Share this article

Itranspired Ruben Amorim endured losing against Grimsby. Survive an important European final against one of the worst Spurs sides in living memory. He could survive losing at home against West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, his rigid approach, squandering some of the club’s most promising academy products, a poor winning percentage, calling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. Yet, there existed one adversary against whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to engage. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, like many a Premiership defender in Blackburn’s title-winning campaign, Amorim came at the executive and seems to have failed. Even the most distracted of readers will notice the irony here: a coach who frequently berated at his players for losing one-on-one duels succumbing when confronted by the white heat and animal charisma of one of the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

And frankly, this whole bruising episode appears to portray Jason Wilcox in a different perspective. It may have been easy, based on his nine months of experience with the Saints, to view Jason Wilcox as little more than a functionary in the United exoskeleton: an individual who owed his position as much to his friendship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada rather than any demonstrable skill. How wrong everyone was. In brilliantly outsmarting the club's celebrated manager, just as he bested the hapless Dan Ashworth earlier, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated as one of football's true generals: a strategic mind that the club's mid-table rivals will now be justifiably concerned.

A Strategic Clash Regarding System and Philosophy

To illustrate, it was Jason Wilcox who being involved in the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim in the first place, played a key role in trying to persuade Amorim to ditch his beloved 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties faced pushback. However, such directives carry more weight when delivered from the mouth with the impeccable football pedigree he possesses, holder of international appearances and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked why Amorim is walking away with full compensation, without any compensation reduction clause in place. The director speaks rarely publicly, and with very good reason. The real thinkers of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – function at a level beyond our own mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, probably all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not quite equivalent to being ready to receive.

The Supreme Authority Behind Command

But of course, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we overlook the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, merely executing the directives of his ultimate superior the billionaire owner, who privately has emphasized his preference for a four-man defense. According to reports, the owner has also proposed deploying the forward in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to embrace data science and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he declared that the team's approach to football “shall be decided in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in this technical football matters, drawing from his background in industry and sailing. Most importantly he remains immensely wealthy, and it is known, the wealthy are superior: more perceptive, more wise, more tactically astute, fundamentally superior. Who else would you trust to oversee a strategic plan of austerity, the construction of a modern arena that looks a lot like an abstract design, the acquisition of a new striker?

The Modern Soccer Hierarchy: Executives Above Coaches

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing in top-tier of the game. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once feasible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with ideas and drive to go into an organization and implement their plan through to completion. Yet how many businesses have these guys established? How many mass redundancies have they overseen? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with the jaw-dropping professional resumes. It is wiser to decide the strategy by the directors and appoint someone who can tailor their methods accordingly. If managers were formerly chefs, they have become more like Deliveroo drivers: not responsible for the food, but still ultimately answerable if it arrives cold or fails of the box.

Nowadays, their job is increasingly not 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. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of literal children into the Champions League and secures two medium-sized trophies, and essentially is dismissed for talking. Wilfried Nancy sees his reputation ruined while those individuals who hired him continue to make errors another day.

A Modern Corporate Football: Accountability Only for the Few

And perhaps on some microcosmic level this represents corporate governance at work: the elevation of a privileged overclass who are infallible, whose decisions are always untouchable, whose errors can always be resolved by sacking without justification. Appoint the 3-4-3 coach only to dismiss him for playing excessively 3-4-3. Bring in the process guy and later bin them for taking excessive time. And above all be grateful; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for your new summer signings, for the fact that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.