Why Ruben Amorim’s axing signals end of super managers in football | Football News
The axing of Manchester United’s Ruben Amorim captures a broader narrative in football. The era of super managers is over, the cult of managers is fading. The nature of his ouster, after fallouts with the CEO, Sporting director and recruitment head, despite a recent upswing in fortunes, affirms the altered reality that the manager is but just another cog, a highly dispensable one, in the vast machinery of running a football club. Amorim, like a young and deluded romantic, remained firm to his ideals. “Not even the Pope could change my tactics,” he would defend his devotion to three man defence. The Pope did not insist; minority stakeholder Sir Jim Ratcliffe did. United, this season, was an upgraded product, but the flare-ups, some of them in public, cost him his grand project. They defended his tactics in the initial months, they stood behind him when he culled out the revolting players, they pacified his defeats, but when he turned against them, they cut them off like a ruthless mafia syndicate. Chelsea’s shunted-manager Enzo Maresca would …




