Ruben Amorim was a snake oil salesman. He was a stirring orator who mixed self-deprecation and bouts of public melancholia with unflinching assessments about quite how low Manchester United had sunk, but the truth is that he was an evangelist for a remedy that simply did not work.
He staked his reputation on a 3-4-2-1 system that he said not even the Pope could persuade him to change and he carried the fans and the United hierarchy along with him, as he rode through the streets in the golden carriage of a rigid formation that dragged the club down to its worst ever Premier League finish last season.
But by the time in the last days of the old year that he packed his team with defenders for a match against Wolverhampton Wanderers, one of the worst teams in recent top-flight history, the grift of his disastrous 14 months in charge was wearing painfully thin.
If you count caretakers and interims and interim interims then Amorim was the 10th manager, or head coach, United have had since Sir Alex Ferguson departed the club but he, more than any of the others who tried to fill those giant shoes, was an emperor with no clothes.
He achieved great things with Sporting Lisbon in Portugal and I was in the Estadio Jose Alvalade in early November 2024 for one of his last games in charge when Sporting swept Manchester City aside 4-1 in the Champions League when the force of Amorim’s personality and the love for him in the stadium, from players and fans, felt like an unstoppable force.
But his success in Portugal did not translate to the Premier League. There were times when the job simply felt too big for him. Some of his press conference performances were compulsive viewing but they also felt desperately naïve and melodramatically self-serving.
Ruben Amorim was a snake oil salesman. He was an evangelist for a remedy that simply did not work
There were times when the job simply felt too big for him. Some of his press conferences were compulsive viewing but they also felt desperately naïve and melodramatically self-serving
When, for instance, he described his side as the worst United team there has ever been, it felt unnecessarily inflammatory as well as factually incorrect. Was he looking for leverage with the board? Was he hoping that if he turned things around, he would be acclaimed a messiah because of the extent of the transformation he had wrought?
Either way, it served little purpose other than to shake confidence in him as a leader and raise questions about whether he had the emotional maturity to deal with a job as big as the one that faced him at Old Trafford.
Even when he did have qualified success by taking United to the Europa League final in Bilbao last May against a Spurs side that was even more mediocre than Amorim’s team, United blew it. They sunk to a narrow defeat in one of the lowest quality European finals there has ever been.
United’s politburo backed him generously in the summer and United do currently sit in sixth place, heady heights under Amorim. But there was still a feeling of drift. There was no vibrancy, no vision, no excitement. Even in a modest hike towards the foothills of the top of the table, there was no real feeling of progress.
United had only won one home game in five against opposition of the quality of Everton, West Ham, Bournemouth, Newcastle United, and Wolves. Six points from a possible 15 was hardly evidence of the dawning of a brave new world.
And so when Amorim began to pick a fight with the United executive branch the day before and immediately after Sunday’s game against Leeds United, hinting at frustrations over recruitment and limits to his responsibilities, he was not operating from a position of strength.
A little like Enzo Maresca at Chelsea, Amorim seemed to have overestimated his place in the power structure. At least Maresca had won trophies, the Conference League and the Club World Cup. Amorim had not won anything. And he did not look like winning anything.
If Amorim thought he was gearing up for a fight with United minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, chief executive Omar Berrada and director of football Jason Wilcox, he was labouring under a fundamental misunderstanding of his power.
If Amorim thought he was gearing up for a fight with United minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, CEO Omar Berrada and director of football Jason Wilcox, then he misunderstood his power
United had only won one home game in five against opposition of the quality of Everton, West Ham, Bournemouth, Newcastle United, and Wolves
There was something almost comic about his rant at Leeds after another game where United had drawn against a team close to the bottom of the table. It was like watching the Black Knight challenging King Arthur as he loses limb after limb. Amorim did not have a leg left to stand on. His performance at Elland Road was a masterclass in self-delusion.
And so United will limp on to another manager. Maybe this time, they will choose better. It is said that Dan Ashworth, their former sporting director, counselled against hiring Amorim because he was worried about his lack of tactical flexibility as well as his absence of high-level experience. That looks extremely prescient now.
In the years since Ferguson retired, United have amassed close to a starting XI of failed successors. There are some big names in that funeral procession and some who made a better fist of the job than others.
Amorim will be remembered with precious little affection, a man who flattered to deceive, a man who spoke well but delivered nothing.
