Man United must go big with next manager after firing Amorim
It is difficult to hire a new Manchester United manager. It has become impossible to fill an impossible position, and for the seventh time since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in May 2013, the Premier League’s biggest club is looking for a new manager after Ruben Amorim was sacked on Monday morning.
They say this at Old Trafford every time the manager’s office is cleared for another appointment, but they really need to get it right this time.
United must think big. It is time for one of the most powerful clubs in the world to hire a manager who has the experience, track record, Premier League credentials and personality to make running the club a privilege rather than a burden.
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It remains to be seen whether they are prepared to wait for a manager like Thomas Tuchel, Mauricio Pochettino or Carlo Ancelotti until after the World Cup, or whether they now bet on someone like Oliver Glasner, Kieran McKenna or Gareth Southgate. Sources have told ESPN that at present there is no clear plan on whether to appoint a new man quickly, or play the long game and leave Darren Fletcher in caretaker charge until the summer.
But the mistakes of the past and the lessons learned from the failed appointments of David Moyes, Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Erik ten Hag and Amorim must now lead United to a manager/coach who can do what each of them could not or were ill-equipped to do: handle pressure, play exciting football and, above all, win.
“When you look at each of the managers we appointed after Sir Alex, they all had some sort of personality flaw,” a United source told ESPN. “They were either too cautious, or too inflexible, or too combative, or just not up to the task, but if you lumped them all into one, you might end up with someone who checked all the boxes.”
1:25
Was the Man United job ‘too big’ for Ruben Amorim?
Julien Laurens explains what went wrong for Ruben Amorim at Manchester United after he was sacked after 14 months at the club.
Amorim, aged just 39 when Man United signed him from Sporting CP in November 2024, was the rising star of European coaching at the time. He had charisma, confidence, a winning record and it was a coup for United to lure him to Old Trafford. He had guided Sporting to two domestic titles, breaking Benfica-Porto’s stranglehold on Portuguese football, and was high on the lists of Liverpool and Barcelona during their own search for a new coach less than six months earlier.
But for all the positives that seemed attached to Amorim’s appointment, he quickly proved to be out of his depth. Sources told ESPN that Amorim was “too stubborn and too immature” to cope with the demands of the job, and after telling the club he would be “flexible” and “evolve” their preferred 3-4-3 formation, he ultimately refused to be more pragmatic until it was too late.
So, after just 14 months, the “next big thing” ended up on the scrapheap at United, like the rest of its post-Ferguson predecessors. And once again, United paid the price of hiring a manager who simply didn’t have the qualifications for the job.
A source told ESPN that United are an “extroverted club run by introverts” and from the perspective of the man sitting in the dugout, it’s a valid observation. Both Amorim and Ten Hag struggled to bear the weight of the task, repeatedly bristling at the noise generated by legendary former players including Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and Roy Keane, now employed as top pundits.
Solskjaer was less thin-skinned, but he lacked the presence and personality of a great club manager. Moyes, who only served as Ferguson’s successor for ten months, was too sensitive to criticism and too inhibited by his role to have any hope of excelling.
Van Gaal steadied the ship after Moyes, but like Amorim, he lost the trust of players, fans and his bosses by becoming too attached to a negative and unappealing style of play that brought limited results. Only Mourinho, hired to replace Van Gaal in 2016, had the qualifications to become United manager, but unfortunately for the club, the self-proclaimed Special One was no longer special upon his arrival at Old Trafford. That’s right, five years too late.
3:04
Who could become Amorim’s successor at Manchester United?
Gab Marcotti and Julien Laurens assess the management options available to Manchester United following the dismissal of Ruben Amorim.
Sources told ESPN that senior United officials recommended Pochettino for the job in 2016 only for the Glazer family, the club’s majority owners, to choose Mourinho because of his background and personality. The Glazers will certainly make their contribution this time around, with co-chairman Joel Glazer having a say alongside minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, CEO Omar Berrada and director of football Jason Wilcox.
The big question is what direction this group will take. Will it be a head coach working in tandem with the director of football, or a more traditional manager with the power to lead the team and club?
Ferguson often said that the biggest personality at a club should be the manager and that is even more the case at United. They’re an alpha football club, but without anyone fitting that description in or above the manager’s office. And that’s what United need now: someone with the ego and credentials to deal with the noise, the ex-players and the demand for results and stylish football.
No one has done it since Ferguson, and it’s time for that to change.
