pPerhaps the most striking aspect of Ruben Amorim’s time at Manchester United is the physical impact of the job, and the changing optics. Amorim showed up at Old Trafford looking like a handsome pirate: the jawline, the regal smile, the fine styling of a European jacket, and the sense of presence of someone who reeks of high-spec car upholstery at all times.
Seven weeks on, he looks like a doomed royal hostage, joylessly being carried from the corridor to the touchline by invisible handlers. The smile broke and shoulders sagged. Recently, the United manager has developed a habit of kneeling down mid-match and peering into the depths of Old Trafford, as if searching for a) a contact lens; and b) the remaining parts of his torn and tender soul.
Welcome to the meat grinder. Amorim has gone almost overnight from notions of perfection, systems, control, and running six months undefeated, to emerging as a knitted mannequin having an existential crisis, buckling under the weight of all that scar tissue, ghosts in the cornices, and voices. Through the wall.
And so, on to Anfield after that. The real problem for Manchester United ahead of Sunday’s trip to face the league leaders is not a run of four consecutive defeats with no goals scored in the past three. It is not a fact that their recent results against these opponents include 3-0, 7-0, 4-0 and 5-0 defeats. It’s not about the possibility that almost every part of this ghost ship will start shaking and creaking on its hinges, from the teary-eyed new additions to the faded celebrity time servers.
It is rather the growing sense that there is some fundamental disconnect between Amorim’s exacting tactical demands and the ability to serve that at a club that is simultaneously over- and understaffed, heritage-rich and financially poor, ceremonially luxurious but also chaotic and childish.
In this context, Liverpool and Arne Slot are the perfect counterpoint. Obsession with systems versus pragmatism: It’s a major dichotomy in modern coaching. On the one hand, the unflinching merchant of philosophy, the evangelist of the way we play.
This has become the norm and necessary form of managerial self-promotion. Vincent Kompany beat Burnley in crisp, exhilarating style, securing one of the best positions in world football. Ange Postecoglou continues to hide his team’s failings behind some sort of ideological defiance, as if there is simply too much at stake here, bro, too much art, too much love, to waste any time learning to defend or adapt or dig up any other gears.
Amorim is a version of this. This is the coach who came to United weeks ago to announce the precise tactical shape in which his teams would play, as if in three players in defense plus the energetic pressing in midfield he discovered some kind of indisputable truth.
By contrast, the key to Slot’s success so far has been the absence of ego, the ability to resist tearing everything down and rebuilding in your own image. Instead, Slott was confident enough to embrace Jurgen Klopp’s legacy, adapt, tweak and improve. Obviously this is much easier when your inheritance is a fully-functioning model for eight years, rather than a Frankenstein’s monster of failed offshoots and eras. But this simple pragmatism has become a kind of superpower in the age of system-mad people.
Amorim was always imposing his own advertised template, a shape and set of styles that every opponent in the world’s toughest league was able to prepare for, even when they didn’t have the players who could. There is no doubt that there will be real improvement in time. He is clearly an excellent manager. But so far he has achieved the truly astonishing feat of making United worse in almost every respect, a rare case of non-rebound.
There are two sides to this. In hindsight, and with the full knowledge of United’s lack of transfer ability, Amorim went from looking like a perfectly reasonable recruitment to being an eccentric and ill-suited piece of work. Right man, wrong basket case.
He’s also been criticized for some inappropriate choices, but given he’s been so open from the start about his tactical intentions, this seems pointless, like criticizing a squirrel for liking nuts. Instead, it was Amorim’s job to point out in minute detail the pre-existing flaws of his employers, most notably during the current year of stupidly living under Ineos’ supervision.
It seems doubly ridiculous now that Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s first round of interviews has included some talk of sitting down with a committee to decide the exact style in which Manchester United will now play – a ludicrous suggestion even without the suggestion that a 70-year-old chemical billionaire should be involved. From his age. In the process, but doubly so now in the context of employing one of Europe’s most stringent systems coaches. Oh yes sir Jim. Tell me again about “forward football”.
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In the same statement letter, Ratcliffe promised that Champions League football would be a non-negotiable demand, then brought in a manager who failed to deliver. United then spent the entire £100m transfer budget on Erik ten Hag’s doomed final window. Chuck appointed and then sacked a “best in class” football manager. Dress it up with a political office of scowling men, there to teach football’s elite all about the culture of high performance.
Ultimately, it is not surprising that the options available on the pitch are sometimes inconsistent. There was a sense in Amorim’s recent midfield choices of a man sitting in a dying car, pressing every pedal and flipping every switch in the desperate hope that something would work out. The past five games have brought four groups into the Amorim main centre, most recently the bizarre spectacle of Casemiro and Christian Eriksen against Newcastle, with Harry Maguire and Matthijs de Ligt at the back, and four men playing football through a giant patch of glue.
Nobody here is suitable for high-density Amorim central line planning. However, we will continue to try to play with a high-intensity midfield, because that is how we do it here. In this sense, Amorim’s struggles also help explain Slott’s early successes.
Klopp has been slightly left out of Liverpool’s current season, as if what happened here is some kind of rescue mission. Indeed, Klopp left behind a strong squad and a strong team culture that Slott has improved and expanded, bringing in new levels of Ryan Gravenberch, Luis Diaz and even Trent Alexander-Arnold in a team that is now allowed to rest on the ball, to leave. Their defenders are less vulnerable.
Moreover, Sunday at Anfield represents a contrast between two models of American ownership: fiscally cautious, data-driven but undeniably competent on the one hand; and the highly successful intrusion of the Glazer family and their hand-picked partners to cut costs.
There will of course be bigger tests for the Slot when this initial iteration hits bumps in the road or loses key personnel and the club has to rebuild. For now, Sunday offers a useful contrast between intelligent, adaptive training, and the strangeness of hiring a systems evangelist and asking him to fill those holes with inappropriate parts. Amorim may make this work in time. Right now, it seems like a case of a man with a plan, where plans go to die.