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Iturns out Ruben Amorim endured a loss to Grimsby. He weathered a decisive continental showpiece against a particularly poor Tottenham teams in living memory. He could survive losing at home to West Ham and Wolves, finishing 15th, the tactical inflexibility, squandering the team's best academy products, a poor winning percentage, calling 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 Jason Wilcox, and you best not miss.

Unfortunately, like many a top-flight right-back in Blackburn’s championship campaign, Amorim came at the executive and seems to have missed. The most distracted of readers can see the paradoxical situation: a manager who often railed at his players for losing one-on-one duels crumbling when confronted by the white heat and animal charisma of a England's top division's most feared sporting directors.

And frankly, this entire painful saga appears to portray Jason Wilcox in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been tempting, given his brief stint of experience with the Saints, to view him as little more than a functionary within the club's structure: an individual who owed his position largely to his close relationship with his former boss a fellow executive as any demonstrable skill. How wrong we all were. By masterfully outsmarting United’s feted manager, just as he bested the hapless a previous executive before him, Jason Wilcox has proved himself to be among the sport’s strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect of which United’s competitors will now be rightly wary.

A Strategic Clash Over Formation & Ideology

To illustrate, it was Jason Wilcox , after having been part of the hierarchy that hired the rigid 3-4-3 advocate the coach originally, played a key role in trying to persuade him to ditch his beloved formation. Naturally, these pleas faced pushback. However, these judgements hold greater authority when issued by a man with the unimpeachable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Maybe eventually Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his reasoning to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked regarding why the coach is walking away with a full payout, with no penalty clause in place. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like him – function on a plane beyond our own mundane comprehension. Were he to speak, most likely we would perceive would be ultrasonic blips and four-dimensional whirring. Desiring an explanation is not the same as being ready to comprehend it.

The Supreme Power In the Throne

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we overlook the real power behind the modern United throne. The director is, after all, merely executing the directives of his line manager Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has emphasized his preference for a four-man defense. It is reported, the owner has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for the club to adopt data science and metrics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit soon after his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style to football “will be decided in this room”.

After all, Ratcliffe is a specialist in these intricate footballing stuff, leveraging his background in industry and sailing. Most importantly he is incredibly rich, and it is known, the wealthy are superior: more perceptive, more wise, strategically brilliant, fundamentally better. Who else would you trust to manage a strategic plan of cost-cutting, the construction of a new stadium that appears similar to someone’s leftover knitting, the signing of Benjamin Sesko?

The New Soccer Order: Directors Over Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. For decades, clubs foolishly entrusted major sporting choices to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, visionary coach with a philosophy and energy to go into a club and implement their plan supported to fruition. But how many businesses have such individuals established? What number of mass redundancies have they overseen? Better by far to place the real power where it belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with impressive LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to determine the strategy in the boardroom and appoint someone who will adapt their offering accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they are now more like delivery personnel: not really responsible for the food, but still finally accountable should it be delivered cold or leaks out to meet standards.

Nowadays, a coach's role is increasingly less about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the receptionist on the front desk, the public face for a club they have minimal power to influence. Enzo Maresca leads a team of literal children into Europe and wins two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for speaking out. Wilfried Nancy sees his standing damaged while those individuals who hired him continue to make errors another day.

The Modern Corporate Football: Accountability Only for the Coaches

And perhaps on some microcosmic level this is simply neoliberalism at work: the rise of a gilded overclass who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose errors can always be sacked away without justification. Appoint the system coach and then dismiss them for playing excessively that system. Hire the project manager and then bin him for taking too long. And most importantly show gratitude; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest summer signings, for the fact that the adults – however well qualified – are in charge.