Manchester United have made what could be the biggest upgrade of 2024, firing Erik ten Hag, whom they never should have carried into a new season anyway, and replacing him with Ruben Amorim from Sporting CP.
Amorim is one of the most touted young managers in world football, having developed some of European football’s most promising players at Sporting, including a pair of potential Manchester United transfer targets in center back Ousmane Diomande and striker Viktor Gyokeres.
Unsurprisingly, Amorim’s gems have already been linked with a move to Old Trafford, and even the blockbuster Gyokeres signing is entirely plausible should Marcus Rashford and/or Joshua Zirkzee fail to impress over the next six months under the Portuguese manager’s leadership.
After the INEOS takeover, Manchester United have an actual structure in place with both a technical and sporting director, and their intention is to avoid a manager like Ten Hag running completely amok and signing players that don’t have long-term value or fit into any sort of a valid sporting project.
Amorim, though, per a report from ESPN’s Rob Dawson, is insistent on having the final say over all Manchester United transfers – both incoming and outgoings – and he made valid points:
“But I have to have a strong position on that because I am the coach. I know how to play, so I think it’s all together but the final word should be the manager.”
“I have a great responsibility when we choose players because this is something that should be done this way. I’m the manager, the head coach, so I have to choose the players.”
Although Manchester United need to have a vetting process with other decision-makers and strong directors in place to make sure each signing is sensible financially, Amorim is absolutely right and every top team follows this philosophy.
As Amorim says, the manager is the one who ultimately has to play the players, and in past seasons, Manchester United harmed themselves by having executives like Ed Woodward who signed big names to bloated contracts due to commercial interests. Said players flopped horribly at Old Trafford, because the manager had no use for them.
Amorim can’t run roughshod and just sign whoever he wants, but he needs to be as involved as anyone in the process of making transfer decisions. Furthermore, he should have veto power if he knows a player doesn’t fit his ideals or if a player is deemed to indispensable to his gameplan to sell,
While Manchester United execs should be able to push back on Amorim and should not make the new manager a dictator of sorts, the reality is that if you want to win in the modern game, you need to buy into a manager’s philosophy and avoid extraneous signings that don’t fit within those parameters set by the boss.
