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Iturns out he endured defeat by Grimsby. Survive losing a crucial European final against a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He could survive home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, his rigid approach, laying waste to the team's best homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, labeling his team the worst in Manchester United history. But there was one adversary against whom the Portuguese coach would not be allowed to dance. If you challenge the sporting director, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, similar to numerous top-flight right-back during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning campaign, Amorim came at the executive and seems to have missed. Even the most casual observer will notice the irony here: a manager who frequently berated at his players for losing individual battles crumbling when confronted by the intense pressure and formidable presence of a England's top division's most intimidating sporting directors.

And frankly, this whole painful saga seems to paint the director in a different perspective. It may have been tempting, given his brief stint of experience at Southampton, to view him as merely a drudge within the club's structure: a man who owed his position as much to his close relationship with his former boss Omar Berrada as any verifiable talent. How mistaken we all were. In brilliantly outsmarting the club's celebrated manager, just as he bested the unfortunate Dan Ashworth earlier, he has demonstrated to be among the sport’s strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which the club's competitors will now be rightly wary.

A Tactical Conflict Over System & Ideology

To illustrate, this was the director who having been part of the hierarchy that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach in the first place, played a key role in attempting to convince him to ditch his favored 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these entreaties faced pushback. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when issued by a man of a man the impeccable football pedigree he possesses, a veteran of three England caps and a role in a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to outline his reasoning to the rest of us. Perhaps at some point he might be asked why Amorim is departing with a full payout, with no compensation reduction clause in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely publicly, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate on a plane exceeding our mundane comprehension. Were he to speak, probably all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not the same as being ready to comprehend it.

An Supreme Power Behind the Throne

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, in reality, simply carrying out the directives of his superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who in private has emphasized his preference for a four-man defense. It is reported, Ratcliffe has also suggested playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. The owner is eager for the club to embrace data science and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he announced that the team's approach of play “will be determined by this group”.

After all, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical football matters, leveraging his previous experience in industry and yachting. Above all he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the wealthy are the best of us: more perceptive, sagacious, more tactically astute, simply better. Who else could one trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the building of a new stadium that looks a lot like an abstract design, the signing of a new striker?

A New Football Hierarchy: Directors Over Coaches

This is a trend that is becoming prevalent in top-tier of the game. Historically, clubs foolishly entrusted major sporting choices to subordinate staff such as coaches, talent spotters – players themselves. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with a philosophy and energy to join a club and see their vision through to completion. Yet how many businesses have these guys set up? How many large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Better by far to place the real power where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with impressive LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to decide the tactics by the directors and appoint a coach who will adapt their methods to suit. If managers were once chefs, they are now more like Deliveroo drivers: not really creating the product, yet finally accountable if it arrives poorly or leaks out to meet standards.

Nowadays, a coach's role is increasingly not about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the receptionist of the operation, the public face of an organisation they can do little to influence. A coach at Chelsea takes a squad of literal children into the Champions League and secures two medium-sized trophies, and effectively is dismissed for talking. Wilfried Nancy finds his reputation ruined whereas those individuals who appointed him live to blunder indefinitely.

The Modern Corporate Game: Accountability for the Coaches

And possibly in a small way this is simply corporate governance at work: the elevation of a gilded elite who are infallible, whose decisions remain untouchable, whose errors can always be sacked away without justification. Appoint the system coach and then dismiss him for using excessively that system. Bring in the process guy and later bin him for taking excessive time. And most importantly show gratitude; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for your new player acquisitions, for the reality that the grownups – however well qualified – are in charge.