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Turns out he could survive defeat by lower-league opposition. He weathered a decisive continental showpiece against a particularly poor Spurs sides for many years. He withstood home defeats to West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, the tactical inflexibility, laying waste to some of the club’s best academy products, the 32% win rate, labeling his team the poorest in Manchester United history. But there was a single opponent with whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to tango. If you challenge the sporting director, you had better succeed.

Unfortunately, like many a Premiership defender in Blackburn’s championship campaign, the coach took on Jason Wilcox and seems to have failed. The most distracted of readers will notice the paradoxical situation: a manager who frequently berated his squad for losing one-on-one duels crumbling when confronted by the intense pressure and formidable presence of a the Premier League’s most intimidating football executives.

In truth, this entire painful saga appears to portray the director in a different perspective. It may have been easy, given his nine months in a similar role with the Saints, to regard him as merely a drudge within the club's structure: a man whose appointment was due largely to his friendship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada as any verifiable talent. How wrong everyone was. By masterfully outsmarting the club's celebrated manager, as he outmanoeuvred the hapless Dan Ashworth before him, Jason Wilcox has proved himself to be among football's strategic masterminds: a strategic mind that the club's mid-table rivals will now be justifiably concerned.

The Strategic Conflict Over Formation & Ideology

To illustrate, this was the director who having been part of the leadership that hired the 3-4-3 fundamentalist Amorim originally, played a key role in trying to persuade Amorim to abandon his favored formation. Unsurprisingly, these pleas were resisted. But perhaps such directives hold greater authority when issued by a man with the impeccable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, a veteran of international appearances and a contributor to a title-winning side decades past.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox may be persuaded to outline his thought processes publicly. Maybe one day he might be asked regarding why the coach is departing with full compensation, without any penalty clause activated. The director seldom speaks in public, for excellent reasons. The real thinkers of this sport – individuals such as Jason Wilcox – function at a level exceeding our prosaic understanding. Were he to speak, most likely all we would hear would be high-frequency signals and four-dimensional whirring. Wanting is not quite the same as being ready to receive.

The Ultimate Power In Command

But of course, by focusing our attention on the sporting director we overlook the real power behind the club's current leadership. Jason Wilcox is, after all, simply carrying out the commands of his ultimate superior Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who privately has made very clear his preference for a back four. According to reports, the owner has also proposed playing Bryan Mbeumo in a wing-back role. Ratcliffe is keen for United to adopt analytics and analytics. According to ESPN, during a leadership summit soon after his minority ownership, he announced that United’s style of play “shall be determined in this room”.

Ultimately, Ratcliffe is an expert in this technical footballing stuff, leveraging his background in industry and yachting. Most importantly he remains incredibly rich, and it is known, the wealthy are superior: more insightful, sagacious, more tactically astute, fundamentally better. Whom else could one trust to manage an enlightened programme of cost-cutting, the construction of a modern arena that looks a lot like an abstract design, the signing of a new striker?

The Modern Football Order: Directors Over Coaches

This is a trend we are increasingly seeing at the elite levels of the game. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated major sporting choices to low-level employees such as coaches, scouts – even footballers. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with ideas and drive to join a club and see their vision through to completion. But how many companies have these guys set up? What number of mass redundancies have they overseen? Far preferable to invest genuine authority where it belongs: the executive class, the open-necked shirt brigade, the individuals with impressive LinkedIn profiles. Better by far to decide the strategy in the boardroom and hire someone who can tailor their methods accordingly. If managers were once chefs, they are now 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, a coach's role has become not about crafting the philosophy and more about marketing it: the receptionist of the operation, the public face for a club they can do little to influence. Enzo Maresca takes a squad of very young players into the Champions League and secures domestic cups, and effectively is dismissed for speaking out. A manager at Celtic sees his standing damaged whereas those individuals who appointed him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Modern Corporate Game: Accountability for the Few

And perhaps in a small way this is simply corporate governance at work: the rise of a gilded elite who are infallible, whose decisions remain sacrosanct, whose mistakes can invariably be sacked away without justification. Hire the 3-4-3 coach only to dismiss him for playing too much 3-4-3. Hire the project manager and then bin him for requiring too long. And above all show gratitude; for the incremental increases in ticket costs, for the latest player acquisitions, for the fact that the grownups – however well qualified – are in charge.