🔗 Share this article

Transpired he endured losing against Grimsby. Survive losing a crucial European final against one of the worst Spurs sides for many years. He could survive losing at home against West Ham and Wolves, a lowly league position, an unwavering system, squandering some of the club’s most promising homegrown talent, a poor winning percentage, labeling the squad the poorest the club has ever seen. But there was a single opponent with whom the Portuguese coach was not permitted to dance. You come at Jason Wilcox, you had better succeed.

Regrettably, like many a Premiership right-back in Blackburn’s championship campaign, the coach took on the executive and appears to have failed. The most distracted of readers can see the irony here: a manager who often railed his squad for losing individual battles succumbing in the face of the white heat and animal charisma of one of the Premier League’s most feared football executives.

And frankly, this whole painful saga appears to portray Jason Wilcox in a whole new light. Perhaps it might have been easy, given his brief stint in a similar role with the Saints, to view Jason Wilcox as merely a drudge within the club's structure: an individual who owed his position as much to his close relationship with ex-colleague Omar Berrada rather than any demonstrable skill. How mistaken everyone was. In brilliantly outsmarting United’s feted head coach, just as he bested the hapless a previous executive before him, Jason Wilcox has demonstrated as one of the sport’s strategic masterminds: a tactical intellect that the club's mid-table rivals are now rightly wary.

The Tactical Conflict Regarding System & Philosophy

For example, this was Jason Wilcox , after being involved in the hierarchy that appointed the rigid 3-4-3 advocate Amorim originally, played a key role in attempting to convince Amorim to ditch his beloved 3-4-3. Unsurprisingly, these pleas faced pushback. However, these judgements hold greater authority when delivered from the mouth with the unimpeachable football pedigree of Jason Wilcox, holder of three England caps and a role in a title-winning side decades past.

Perhaps in time Jason Wilcox might agree to explain his thought processes to the rest of us. Maybe one day he might be asked regarding why the coach is departing with a full payout, with no penalty clause activated. The director seldom speaks publicly, for excellent reasons. The true intellectuals of this sport – men like Jason Wilcox – simply operate on a plane beyond our own mundane comprehension. If he ever did speak, probably we would perceive is a series of high-frequency signals and complex calculations. Desiring an explanation is not equivalent to being prepared to comprehend it.

An Ultimate Authority Behind the Throne

Naturally, in training our focus on Jason Wilcox we overlook the real power behind the club's current leadership. The director is, after all, simply carrying out the directives of his line manager the billionaire owner, who in private has made very clear his desire for a back four. It is reported, the owner has also proposed deploying the forward as a right wing-back. Ratcliffe is keen for United to embrace analytics and analytics. According to ESPN, in an executive meeting early in his investment, he announced that the team's approach to football “will be determined in this room”.

After all, Sir Jim is a specialist in this technical footballing stuff, leveraging his previous experience in petrochemicals and yachting. Most importantly he remains incredibly rich, and as we all know, the wealthy are superior: more perceptive, sagacious, strategically brilliant, fundamentally better. Who else could one trust to manage a strategic plan of cost-cutting, the construction of a new stadium that looks a lot like an abstract design, the acquisition of a new striker?

A New Soccer Hierarchy: Executives Above Coaches

This represents a shift we are increasingly seeing in top-tier football. For decades, teams mistakenly delegated major sporting choices to subordinate staff such as coaches, scouts – even footballers. Perhaps it was once possible for an up-and-coming, innovative manager with ideas and energy to go into an organization and implement their plan supported to fruition. Yet how many businesses have such individuals established? How many mass redundancies have they managed? Better by far to invest genuine authority where it rightly belongs: the executive class, the casually dressed executives, the guys with the jaw-dropping LinkedIn profiles. It is wiser to determine the strategy by the directors and appoint a coach who will adapt their methods to suit. If managers were once chefs, they are now more akin to delivery personnel: not really responsible for the product, yet ultimately answerable should it be delivered poorly or leaks out to meet standards.

In the meantime, a coach's role is increasingly not about defining the vision and more about marketing it: the receptionist on the front desk, the visible figurehead for a club they have minimal power to influence. A coach at Chelsea leads a team of literal children into the Champions League and wins two medium-sized trophies, and effectively gets sacked for speaking out. A manager at Celtic finds his standing damaged whereas the people who hired him live to blunder indefinitely.

A Modern Corporate Football: Accountability for the Coaches

And perhaps on some microcosmic level this is simply neoliberalism in action: the rise of a privileged overclass who are infallible, whose decisions remain sacrosanct, whose errors can always be sacked away without explanation. Appoint the system coach only to fire him for playing excessively that system. Hire the project manager and then discard them for requiring too long. And above all be grateful; for your modest season ticket price rises, for your new summer signings, for the reality that the grownups – however well qualified – are in charge.