RUBEN AMORIM - Sporting Chance
Several managers have failed to return Manchester United to their perch since Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement. Ruben Amorim overcame potential bans and a Christmas row with Jesus to revive a listing Lisbon giant, but can lightning strike twice at Old Trafford? Those who know him best reveal all
Words Chris Flanagan
Additional reporting Felipe Rocha, Marcus Alves
One simple sentence gave the game away, and has become more telling with every passing year. Sir Alex Ferguson knew.
“Your job now is to stand by our new manager,” the Scot told the Old Trafford crowd after his final home game as Manchester United boss, in May 2013.
That he felt it necessary to utter those words made it clear that Ferguson was concerned about whether United would remain united without him. Concerned, too, about whether United would remain United without him. In the near-12 years since, the glory days have grown ever more distant. Stepping into Ferguson’s shoes always felt like it might be the impossible job, and so it proved for his first five permanent successors. David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, José Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Erik ten Hag. All tried and failed. Now it’s the turn of 39-year-old Ruben Amorim, exiled on loan at Braga after a dispute with his manager, on the day that Ferguson called for unity in 2013.
Via the threat of a year-long suspension that almost derailed his coaching ambitions at the very start, and a ballsy move to Portugal’s most chaotic club, Amorim’s own managerial career has certainly never been boring. Ending Sporting’s 19-wait for a Primeira Liga title was highly impressive, but returning Manchester United to the top will be his toughest task yet.
SHEER HARTE ATTACK
Amorim’s first managerial experiences came in front of a computer, in a house on the south bank of the River Tagus, across the water from Lisbon. Growing up, he’d play video games there with pal Bruno Simao – the pair were nine when they first teamed up in Benfica’s youth system.
“He was always so into Championship Manager,” Simao tells FFT, referencing the forerunner to Football Manager. “We played it a lot at his uncle’s house. I often played as Leeds – they had a left-back I really admired, Ian Harte. Ruben leaned towards Real Madrid. He’s always had a sharp mind for tactics.”
It’s something Amorim touched upon in a chapter he wrote for Hugo Leal’s recent book Nao e so Futebol, Estupido (It’s Not Just Football, Stupid). “When I started playing football, unlike most kids who enjoyed the informal kickabouts, I was always more interested in the concept of the game itself,” he explained. “In training sessions, I wanted to understand everything that was happening, to grasp what was being asked of me. I used to watch all my games, because my dad would record them. I’d spend the entire weekend at home, watching them from back to front.”
Amorim earned the nickname ‘O Bebe-Agua’, ‘the Drinkwater’, not because he was a fanboy of future Premier League-winning Leicester midfielders but because he literally drank water. “Only water,” laughs Simao. “Everyone called him that – his team-mates, even the parents! Many still call him that to this day. He just genuinely liked water, he didn’t want anything else.”
Benfica released Amorim at 13. Four years later, he’d link up with Simao again at fellow Lisbon club Belenenses.
“I invited him to join me there, but he said he’d broken his arm,” remembers Simao. “I told him not to worry about that and I’d talk to the coach. Ruben did a training session to be evaluated – I explained to the coach, ‘He’s incredibly talented, but he has his arm in a sling’. The coach decided to play him as a centre-back, to see how he moved and handled the ball. When the session ended, the coach told me, ‘Bruno, you were right, he’s a real talent’.”
Amorim signed, developing into a first-team regular under future Sheffield Wednesday and Swansea boss Carlos Carvalhal. “Within two or three months of moving from the juniors to the seniors, he practically dominated the dressing room, full of players in their 30s who’d been there for years,” explains Rui Casaca, the club’s youth football director. “He has tremendous character. He dominated in a positive way, through how he was accepted.”
Amorim helped Belenenses into the UEFA Cup under Jorge Jesus, earning him a return to Benfica. By 2009-10, Jesus joined him at the Eagles, and the pair immediately won the league. With Ramires, Pablo Aimar and Angel Di Maria running the midfield, Amorim often featured at right-back, further broadening his tactical experiences.
At the end of that season, his Portugal debut unusually came in their opening game of the 2010 World Cup, as a late sub in a 0-0 draw against Ivory Coast. Months later, though, knee problems hit – when he returned in 2011-12, despite featuring in two Champions League group stage draws with Manchester United, he grew frustrated at a lack of game time. Aiming a dig at Jesus while on international duty, he then rowed with his manager in the dressing room after a match against Rio Ave, annoyed that he’d been asked to warm up, then never sent on from the bench.
Amorim has always been a popular and friendly figure, but his breaking point came when he felt he was being disrespected. The pair’s dispute turned into all-out war when Amorim reportedly refused to take part in a training session for the substitutes and, just before Christmas 2011, Jesus froze out his erstwhile lieutenant and loaned him to Braga. Amorim remained an Archbishop for a season and a half, featuring twice more against Manchester United in the 2012-13 Champions League during Ferguson’s final Old Trafford campaign.
CASA PIA, HERE I GO AGAIN
As it turned out, Ferguson’s “your job is to stand by our new manager” speech should have been aimed at the board, not the fans. Before the 2013-14 season was over, David Moyes was sacked, with Manchester United seventh in the Premier League.
“It was really hard for him,” Rafael da Silva, part of that squad, tells FFT. “He was Scottish too, but they were different people, different managers, with totally different styles. Any manager who arrived after everything Ferguson had done was going to have a hard time. The club was completely adapted to a certain style, it had been 27 years.
“Moyes sometimes received unjust criticism – he took on a thankless task. It would have been difficult for any coach in the world.”
Louis van Gaal didn’t find it easy either. The Dutchman lifted the FA Cup, but finished fourth and fifth before being replaced by José Mourinho, who won the League Cup, Europa League and guided the club to second by April 2018, when a special visitor arrived at Carrington. Post-Braga, Amorim and Jesus had buried the hatchet and won a domestic Treble with Benfica in 2014. Another knee injury followed, though, then a loan at Qatari club Al Wakrah, and Amorim retired at 32 in April 2017.
Quickly, he began studying to become a manager. He joined a course with links to Mourinho and was one of three budding coaches invited to spend a week with The Special One at Manchester United. The aspiring cohort would arrive at Carrington at 8.30am each day, watch training, then speak to his compatriot afterwards. “They’d earmarked Ruben as one of the next good Portuguese coaches, so Mourinho was moulding him,” explained Canadian coach Geoff Labine, another of the trio on the trip.
Amorim ended the week by watching Mourinho’s side beat Arsenal, in Arsène Wenger’s final match at Old Trafford. Manchester United’s second-placed finish proved a false dawn, though – things unravelled early in 2018-19, and Mourinho was gone by December.
Amorim’s coaching career looked like unravelling, too, almost as soon as it had begun. After defeats in his first two matches as manager of third-tier club Casa Pia, Amorim vowed to quit if he lost the third, only to turn the team’s form around and move them into promotion contention. Old pal Simao had joined his squad that season.
“I’d had a very serious motorcycle accident, which left me in a coma for three days, but by a miracle I’d managed to recover,” explains Simao. “I contacted Ruben and asked if he’d consider taking on the best left-back, centre-back, midfielder and forward in that league – me!
“He said, ‘First of all, please don’t confuse friendship with work. You’re a player who, just four months ago, was in a hospital bed in a coma. You’re 33, I’m already bringing in two players over 30, I don’t want any issues with people saying I have too many old players’.
“I understood and wished him the greatest success in the world – I was certain he’d become an excellent coach, because his football intelligence was far above average. About a week later, he contacted me, asking how my recovery was going. Three days after that, he said he wanted me to join Casa Pia.
“He started with four at the back, we lost the first two matches, but in the third week, he said, ‘I’m going to make a change – from this week forward, we’re going to use three centre-backs’. I’d been a left-back my entire career, but he said I was going to play centre-back. I started laughing and said, ‘Are you crazy?!’ He told me to trust him, that I had experience and would adapt well.
“It wasn’t easy, but he worked tirelessly with the backline, he drilled us relentlessly, over and over. Ruben at work is like the Portuguese saying: ‘Work is work, and cognac is cognac’ – there’s a time for joking and a time for working. One day, I didn’t show up for training and he was ready to release me from the club. For him, there’s no special status – the only reason I wasn’t let go was because the other players told him I deserved another chance.
“He’s a perfectionist. Nobody plays with fear or uncertainty, wondering whether they’re doing this or that right. His communication in every training session is so clear it leaves no room for doubt. He’s amazing at understanding players’ minds – he knows how to motivate them, when to push, when to
ease off. He maintains very close contact with his players – that connection is what’s helped him win
over every squad he’s coached.
“I’ve never been part of a team that played such beautiful football as the one he built at Casa Pia. The way we played was extraordinary.”
There was an issue, though. Amorim hadn’t yet completed all the requisite coaching badges, so hadn’t officially been registered as manager at Casa Pia. The National Association of Football Coaches complained, saying he’d been seen giving instructions from the bench during matches. Halfway through 2018-19, Casa Pia were deducted six points and Amorim banned for a year. His entire coaching career threatened, Amorim successfully appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the punishments first paused, then rescinded. He resigned nonetheless.
“He had tears in his eyes when he said goodbye,” recalls Simao. “He creates a strong bond, a brotherhood-like connection. Players are willing to work for him because they know he’d give everything for them, he goes above and beyond to protect his players.”
INTO THE LIONS’ DEN
Overturning the punishment was important – Amorim became Braga’s B team boss within eight months, then became first-team boss in December 2019, with the team struggling in eighth in the Primeira Liga.
“He impressed everyone with his ideas,” says Braga’s executive director Rui Casaca, who had worked with Amorim at Belenenses. “When the president invited him to take over the senior team, he unleashed those ideas.”
Immediately switching them to the 3-4-3 that had worked so successfully at Casa Pia, he won his first game 7-1 at old club Belenenses, beat Sporting and Porto to clinch the Portuguese League Cup within a month, defeated both in the league too, and claimed the club’s first win at Benfica for 65 years. By early March 2020, he’d navigated a horror run of fixtures by winning eight of his first nine league games, drawing the other – rocketing the club to third, above Sporting. “He was very close with the players – he’d joke around with them a lot,” reflects Casaca. “It created an excellent atmosphere.”
Flagging Sporting had seen enough. Os Leoes removed existing boss Silas and immediately paid Amorim’s €10m release clause to hire him. Portuguese media reported that it made him the third most expensive manager in history, the fee only previously outdone by those involved when Andre Villas-Boas moved from Porto to Chelsea, and Brendan Rodgers joined Leicester from Celtic. Amorim had been a top-flight manager for only two and a half months.
“The president said that if Amorim had stayed at Braga, the team could’ve become champions in a short time,” reveals Casaca. “At Sporting, though, there was scepticism from fans about hiring a coach for so much money.”
Amorim joined a club in turmoil, having last won the league in 2002. Following the failure to qualify for the Champions League at the end of 2017-18, nine key players announced they were unilaterally terminating their contracts after 50 masked men attacked the squad at the training ground.
Bombastic club president Bruno de Carvalho, dubbed the Portuguese Trump, had encouraged such antipathy the month prior having singled out six players for criticism after a Europa League quarter-final first leg loss at Atlético Madrid – 19 of the squad responded with a statement criticising Carvalho, who then announced he was suspending the lot of them.
Shocked and distracted by the training ground attack, Sporting then lost the 2018 Portuguese Cup Final to minnows Aves. Rafael Leao, William Carvalho, Rui Patricio, Bas Dost and Bruno Fernandes were among those to demand an exit. The latter pair were talked into staying, aided by the removal of the president by a vote of Sporting’s members.
Childhood pal Simao was concerned that Amorim, godfather to his daughter Carolina, was taking a huge risk.
“I said to Ruben, ‘Are you crazy?’” he admits. “Everyone knew Sporting were so unstable, managers coming and going, a constant turnover, even at board level. There was also the pressure of being openly a Benfica fan, taking charge of their rivals. He’d just started at Braga, he was beginning to build a reputation, so to leave for Sporting, it just seemed like madness.
“He said, ‘I’m very relaxed, I don’t feel any pressure, because there’s no way this can fail – I won’t do anything that will push Sporting lower or make them more unstable than they currently are.’”
Quite the opposite. The pandemic shut down the league a week after a 2-0 defeat of Aves, giving Amorim time to
drill his trademark 3-4-3 philosophy before they played again in June. His first eight league games produced six wins and two draws and provided the bedrock for the extraordinary 2020-21 season that followed, as Os Leoes lost just once to end a 19-year wait for a league title. His first 52 games as a Primeira Liga manager had delivered just two defeats. He was still only 36.
ANFIELD OR OLD TRAFFORD
There was controversy once more en route to the title. Determined to get heir man, the National Association of Football Coaches threatened Amorim with another ban – up to six years this time – for being incorrectly registered as assistant rather than manager when Sporting first hired him, again because of a lack of the required coaching badges. The club issued a robust defence, insisting they believed he’d worked in the same circumstances at Braga with no problems. Again, Amorim was later absolved of wrongdoing.
Sporting went unbeaten for the first 16 league games of 2021-22, too, as Amorim reached 50 Primeira Liga victories faster than any other manager. They matched the points total from their title-winning campaign, but it only secured second this time around.
Key midfield pairing Joao Palhinha and Matheus Nunes left for Fulham and Wolves respectively ahead of the 2022-23 campaign, though, and Sporting limped to fourth, despite more game time for Manuel Ugarte, now with Amorim at Manchester United. Like at Casa Pia, the manager left the door open for a parting of the ways.
“In the conversation with the president, the first thing I said was I’d make my position available, due to the failure to achieve our objectives,” he later revealed.
Sporting had no intention of letting Amorim go, instead allowing their coach to sign Viktor Gyokeres from Coventry for £20m. The Swede scored 43 times in 50 games as Sporting bagged 96 goals across 34 league fixtures, their highest tally since 1973-74, to win the league again. “One of his strengths is his surgical approach to signings,” says Casaca. “Sporting didn’t make a lot of signings, but the ones they made were crucial.”
Premier League interest in Amorim was inevitable. Liverpool held talks as they sought a replacement for Juergen Klopp, but backed out over concerns his predilection for that 3-4-3 required too big a squad overhaul and was at odds with the Reds’ philosophy of playing a back four at every level of the club. They were also reportedly upset at claims they’d verbally agreed a deal with Amorim – actually, Arne Slot was still very much in the race.
Chelsea are believed to have spoken to Amorim on two different occasions, while he apologised to Sporting fans last April when a meeting with West Ham made the media.
Amorim was even mentioned in dispatches as a contender to replace Pep Guardiola should the Catalan leave Manchester City, whispers hardly silenced with Sporting’s director of football Hugo Viana set to replace Txiki Begiristain at the Etihad this summer.
“In our discussions, I noticed how much he referenced Guardiola’s way of working,” remembers Casaca of his time with Amorim at Braga. “It was often, ‘Look at how Manchester City do this, or how Guardiola does that.’”
Amorim was reportedly on Manchester United’s shortlist in 2022 before they hired Erik ten Hag. Seemingly lacking any consistent philosophy since Ferguson’s retirement, United made their move two years later, without needing to think twice like Liverpool. Ole-Gunnar Solskjaer’s nostalgia-heavy tribute act tried to revive Ferguson’s style but fell short of a trophy, despite coming second in 2021, while Ten Hag’s League Cup and FA Cup triumphs masked an apparent absence of any coherent strategy during a worrying amount of Premier League matches. Sporting director Dan Ashworth, recruited at great expense for his holistic approach, left less than a month into Amorim’s tenure amid tensions that the back three couldn’t be applied club-wide.
Since Ferguson, several highly qualified managers have arrived at Old Trafford, yet ended up looking like fools. Some former players are still scratching their heads to explain why. “Man, there’s no answer to that, I have no idea…” says Rafael. “A lot of fans, a lot of people want that answer, you journalists don’t know either. When I get that answer, I’m going to ask to be United’s next manager!”
Rene Meulensteen, Ferguson’s firstteam coach between 2008 and 2013, sees recurring themes. “If you look at what United was under Sir Alex,” he tells FFT, “I don’t think any of the managers have come close to having a good level of possession. In the past few years, how many teams have gone to Old Trafford and had more possession than United?
“With us, that possession also always had a purpose. Van Gaal won an FA Cup and actually did have all the possession in the world, but it was laboured, slow. Mourinho won trophies and probably got closest in terms of challenging, finishing second. So did Solskjaer at one point, but he was miles behind City and never won a trophy.
“Van Gaal, Mourinho and Ten Hag did, so you have to consider they did the best since Sir Alex, but nobody has found consistency. Under Solskjaer they played some great games, then fell back – the amount of times he was in front of the camera, saying, ‘It’s not good enough’.
“You question the recruitment. The last squad we had under Sir Alex was very balanced in terms of talent, potential and experience. People say we had an ageing squad that was coming to the end. Listen, if Sir Alex Ferguson had carried on, we’d have probably made two or three really good signings, we’d have been up there again.”
THE 18-MONTH ITCH
Amorim has form for taking a club back to the top – at Sporting, though, there were only three teams to overtake. Did Simao tell him he was crazy once more, for accepting the Manchester United job?
“No, no…” laughs his friend. “This time I sent a message of support, although this season will be very complicated. Ruben is good, but he’s not a miraclemaker. You couldn’t expect him to just take over and fix everything overnight. Fans need to be patient. He doesn’t yet have the right players for his system.”
Van Gaal attempted to switch to three at the back, too, but abandoned it. “He tried it when he arrived, but I never really played – he didn’t like me,” says Rafael. “It’s not easy to change the system. Sir Alex never used a back three, he didn’t like it. But the player has to make an effort to understand the way the new coach wants to play. I really like Amorim – with time, things will fall into place.”
Fellow former Manchester United defender Wes Brown agrees. “The only time I ever played 3-4-3 was at Sunderland,” he says. “You have spells where you’re unbelievable, then all of a sudden you don’t know what’s going on – your opponent might’ve changed something and you’re chasing shadows. That’s why it needs time and practice, you want it to become second nature.
“I really like the way Amorim has conducted himself. After a game, he talks about what was right, what was wrong, who was wrong, but in the right way. He’s not digging anyone out, but he wants them to play differently.”
The Portuguese’s explanation – concise, informative but with an olive branch at the end – for leaving Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho out of his Manchester derby matchday squad was a case in point. The come-frombehind victory that followed helped, too.
“I love his communication and honesty,” explains ex-Old Trafford striker Louis Saha. “Sometimes a manager is the first to throw players under the bus, but he’s here to protect them, to bring them back to a confidence level he knows they need to be at, to perform the way he wants. He has empathy. At the same time, he also has humility.”
Meulensteen knows the size of the long-term task. “You step into Manchester United, who haven’t got it going for the last 12 years, and think, ‘Moyes, Van Gaal, Mourinho, Solskjaer, ten Hag, why would I be different?’,” says the Dutchman. “He must be very convinced about himself, but we all know how difficult it is at United.”
Has managing the Red Devils become the impossible job? “Almost, yeah,” concedes Meulensteen. “He came in at a difficult moment, the season was up and running, game after game, plus it wasn’t his squad or system. He’s had to try to make two things work, whereas most managers would say, ‘Let’s see what I’ve got in the squad and fit the best possible system around it’, rather than the other way around. That could turn out to be the impossible job.
“It usually takes a manager around 18 months. When Jurgen Klopp went in at Liverpool, Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, it was about 18 months. Klopp was eighth in the first year.
“They come in, it’s not their squad but they’ve got an idea – ‘This is how I want to play’. That takes six months to really get things across, to get your training sessions in place. After that, you’ve got your first transfer window. Do you need to do something now, or can you wait until the end of the season?
“Then you’ve got the summer transfer window, that’s the time to get rid of players you don’t want, bring in others, with another six months to bed that in. You’re 18 months in, but then it’s totally your team and you steadily start to see performances and consistency – that’s exactly what happened with Guardiola at City, and Klopp at Liverpool.
“Amorim’s starting point is completely different to Arne Slot’s, though. So how long will it take? F**king hell, god knows. They have to get to a point where if you see Manchester United stepping on to the pitch, they’re playing well, they don’t give goals away and they score for fun. They’ve been a long way off that. When you get that, though, things can go reasonably quickly.”
If anyone can achieve that, Bruno Simao believes it’s his childhood friend – the Championship Manager addict from the outskirts of Lisbon. “Manchester United haven’t been heading in the right direction for a few years, but we’re talking about one of the greatest clubs in the world,” says Simao. “I’m certain that during his spell there, Ruben will leave his mark and make history at that club. He will be successful, I’m absolutely sure of it.”
Amorim was born nine days before Cristiano Ronaldo, the last Portuguese rising star to leave Sporting and revolutionise Manchester United. His task, then, is to emulate arguably the greatest manager of all time, and also one of the greatest footballers of all time, at what has since become the world’s most dysfunctional super-club.
No pressure, Ruben…
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“THE TASK IS ENORMOUS”
Stephen Howson, from the Stretford Paddock YouTube channel, gives a fan’s perspective on Amorim’s arrival
The past decade has been so frustrating. From the weight of expectation that crushed David Moyes to the promising-butfleeting tenures of Louis van Gaal, José Mourinho, Ole-Gunnar Solskjaer and Erik ten Hag, each appointment offered hope, but crumbled to despair.
Watching Ten Hag’s confidence fade into another disappointing chapter has left me jaded by this club’s cyclical struggles. Ruben Amorim arrives as a bright young coach with fresh ideas, but my optimism is guarded.
The transition to INEOS and their supposed ‘football-first’ vision offered tentative hope that we may escape the Glazer era’s banker-driven appointments. Yet, the scars of the past run deep. Amorim’s success will hinge on transforming a squad that, frankly, has felt worryingly thin, especially in attack. We’ve seen Wayne Rooney, Robin van Persie, Angel Di Maria, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Romelu Lukaku, even Radamel Falcao – players who, despite individual failings, had game-changing quality.
This season, our forward line has felt mid-table level. We’re relying on players to overturn years of poor form, or on young prospects who might never fully deliver. Even with everything clicking perfectly, it’s hard to see us being more than functional.
That said, I believe Amorim will get the time, patience and support from INEOS – he’s their man. He’ll need all of that – and some luck. The scale of the job in front of him is enormous. I can’t take another decade of this… but here we go again.
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POINTS PER GAME
1.79 Van Gaal
1.81 Solskjaer
1.72 Ten Hag
1.68 Moyes
1.89 Mourinho
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