Rúben Amorim was announced on Friday as Manchester United’s sixth permanent coach since 2012/13, the season of the club’s last title as English football champion, which never recovered from the departure of the ‘legendary’ Alex Ferguson.
Almost six months after celebrating Sporting’s 20th title, and second in four complete seasons in Alvalade, the former midfielder with some surprise suppressed the objective of continuing to pursue the first ‘Leonine’ double championship in 70 years and will succeed from the 11th of November for Dutchman Erik ten Hag in the Premier League record holder (20), who paid 12.7 million euros (ME), including the 10 ME from the release clause.
At 39 years old, Amorim aims to return Manchester United, owned by Portuguese internationals Diogo Dalot and Bruno Fernandes, to levels of excellence, which is in 14th place in the English League, with 11 points, 12 behind four-time champion and leader Manchester City.
The ‘Red Devils’ are experiencing their second worst start after nine rounds in a Premier League edition and are falling short of the mentality built over 27 seasons by Scotsman Alex Ferguson, with whom they became one of the most fearsome teams in the world.
Between November 1986 and May 2013, United won more than half of their 70 trophies in 146 years of existence, celebrating 38 achievements, including 13 national championships, five FA Cups, two Champions Leagues and a FIFA World Cup. clubs.
This competitiveness would decrease drastically with the departure of Ferguson, now 82 years old and promoted since his retirement to the position of global ambassador for the club – which will be abolished at the end of the season -, as he won only two FA Cups, two League Cups and two English Super Cups, plus the 2016/17 edition of the Europa League, guided by José Mourinho.
The Setubalense was the most successful of the five coaches hired permanently in the post-Ferguson period and until the arrival of Rúben Amorim – there were still four interim coaches -, collecting three trophies and the best performance (58.3%), between 2016 and 2018.
In addition to impatience with several coaches, the Glazer family club spent more than two thousand ME on reinforcements in the last 11 years, of which 660 ME in the five market windows with Erik ten Hag, heavily criticized by Cristiano Ronaldo following the second spell of the striker and captain of the national team for Manchester, from 2021 to 2022.
Rúben Amorim’s predecessor had larger investments than David Moyes, Louis Van Gaal, José Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, and last summer saw 214.5 ME disbursed in the acquisitions of Leny Yoro, Manuel Ugarte, Matthijs de Ligt, Noussair Mazraoui and Joshua Zirkzee.
This quintet boosted Manchester United’s first market window under the influence of the new shareholder, multimillionaire Jim Ratcliffe, owner of Ineos, a multinational company in the chemical industry, who had acquired 27.7% of the share capital in February.
Despite the minority position assumed, the English engineer became responsible for managing the football operations of the ‘red devils’, who were coming from their worst ranking since 1989/90 in the Premier League, finishing the 2023/24 edition in eighth place.
Winning the FA Cup against city rivals Manchester City (2-1), in May, was crucial for the maintenance of Erik ten Hag, whose adventure would not last more than five months, having started 2024/25 with a defeat against ‘citizens’ in the English Super Cup penalty shoot-out (6-7, after 1-1 at the end of regulation time).
In addition to the unstable start to the Premier League, Manchester United will visit Tottenham in the quarter-finals of the League Cup and occupies 21st place in the revamped league phase of the Europa League, among 36 clubs, with three points, resulting from as many draws – prevented the defeat against FC Porto (3-3) in stoppage time and due to numerical inferiority.
Rúben Amorim is the first technical bet of the new administration to rebuild the ‘red devils’ in the medium term, who must exchange the traditional ‘4-2-3-1’ for the ‘3-4-3’ characteristic of the still Sporting coach, acquired for two and a half years, until June 2027, with a further optional season, but without Erik ten Hag’s enhanced powers off the bench.
In addition to right-back Diogo Dalot and midfielder and captain Bruno Fernandes, who played for the ‘lions’ between 2017 and 2020, but left two months before the arrival of his future coach in Alvalade, the squad brings together the experienced André Onana, Tyrell Malacia , Lisandro Martínez, Harry Maguire, Luke Shaw, Mason Mount, Christian Eriksen, Antony and Marcus Rashford or the emerging Kobbie Mainoo, Alejandro Garnacho, Amad Diallo and Rasmus Hojlund.
Swedish defender Victor Lindelöf played on the field with Rúben Amorim in three matches at Benfica – one in the main team and two for the B team – from 2013 to 2015.
Sporting’s highest sale since the departure of Bruno Fernandes, costing a fixed 60 ME to three-time French champion Paris Saint-Germain, Uruguayan midfielder Manuel Ugarte will reunite with the only coach he worked with in Alvalade, between 2021 and 2023, while Brazilian midfielder Casemiro played for FC Porto in 2014/15.
The next stop in the championships for national team games will accommodate Amorim’s arrival at one of the most popular clubs in world football, led on an interim basis by former striker Ruud van Nistelrooy and always surrounded by controversial comments from former glories of the Alex Ferguson era, whose legacy , charisma and mysticism from the stands symbolize the standards by which each successor has been measured.
