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Itbecame clear Ruben Amorim could survive a loss to lower-league opposition. Survive an important European final versus one of the worst Tottenham teams for many years. He withstood losing at home to West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, laying waste to the team's best academy products, a poor winning percentage, calling the squad the poorest in Manchester United history. Yet, there existed one adversary with whom Ruben Amorim would not be allowed to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a top-flight right-back during Blackburn Rovers' title-winning campaign, Amorim came at Jason Wilcox and appears to have failed. Even the most casual observer will notice the irony here: a coach who frequently berated his squad for losing one-on-one duels succumbing when confronted by the intense pressure and formidable presence of a the Premier League’s most intimidating football executives.

And frankly, this entire painful saga seems to paint the director in a different perspective. Perhaps it might have been easy, based on his nine months of experience at Southampton, to regard him as merely a drudge in the United exoskeleton: a man who owed his position as much to his close relationship with ex-colleague a fellow executive rather than any verifiable talent. How wrong we all were. In brilliantly outsmarting United’s feted manager, just as he bested the unfortunate a previous executive earlier, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated as one of football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that the club's mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

The Strategic Conflict Over System and Ideology

For example, this was the director who having been part of the hierarchy that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim originally, was instrumental in trying to persuade him to abandon his favored 3-4-3. Naturally, these entreaties were resisted. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when delivered from the mouth of a man the unimpeachable soccer background of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of three England caps and a contributor to a championship team from 31 years ago.

Perhaps in time he may be persuaded to outline his thought processes publicly. Maybe one day questions may arise regarding why the coach is departing with full compensation, with no compensation reduction clause activated. But Jason Wilcox speaks rarely in public, and with very good reason. The true intellectuals in football – men like Jason Wilcox – function on a plane beyond our own mundane comprehension. Were he to speak, most likely all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Wanting is not quite the same as being prepared to receive.

An Supreme Power In Command

But of course, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we are obscuring the true genius behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, simply carrying out the commands of his superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has emphasized his preference for a back four. According to reports, the owner has also suggested playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. The owner is eager for the club to embrace data science and metrics. Per reports, in an executive meeting soon after his minority ownership, he declared that United’s style to football “will be decided by this group”.

After all, Sir Jim is a specialist in these intricate football matters, leveraging his previous experience in industry and sailing. Most importantly he remains incredibly rich, and it is known, the wealthy are superior: more insightful, sagacious, strategically brilliant, fundamentally superior. Whom else would you trust to manage a strategic plan of austerity, the construction of a modern arena that looks a lot like someone’s leftover knitting, the acquisition of Benjamin Sesko?

A Modern Soccer Hierarchy: Directors Over Managers

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. For decades, teams mistakenly entrusted major sporting choices to low-level employees such as coaches, scouts – players themselves. Perhaps it was once feasible for a young, innovative manager with a philosophy and energy to go into an organization and see their vision supported to fruition. Yet how many companies have these guys established? What number of large-scale layoffs have they overseen? Far preferable to place the real power where it rightly belongs: the leadership tier, the casually dressed executives, the individuals with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to determine the strategy in the boardroom and hire a coach who will adapt their offering to suit. If managers were formerly chefs, they have become more akin to delivery personnel: not really creating the product, yet ultimately answerable should it be delivered poorly or leaks out to meet standards.

In the meantime, their job is increasingly less about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the front-facing representative of the operation, the public face of an organisation they have minimal power to change. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into Europe and wins two medium-sized trophies, and essentially is dismissed for talking. A manager at Celtic finds his reputation ruined whereas the people who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Modern Corporate Game: Responsibility Only for the Coaches

And perhaps in a small way this is simply corporate governance in action: the elevation of a privileged elite who can never be wrong, whose decisions are always sacrosanct, whose mistakes can always be sacked away without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach and then dismiss him for using too much that system. Hire the project manager and then discard them for taking too long. And above all show gratitude; for your modest increases in ticket costs, for the latest summer signings, for the fact that the grownups – regardless of their expertise – remain in control.