Ruben Amorim never played in the Premier League, but ever since leading Sporting CP to the Portuguese league title in 2021, it has felt like a matter of time before he ended up there. Whenever an English club of any stature has been on the lookout for a new manager, his name has never been far away from the list of candidates. And after being linked with Chelsea, Tottenham, Liverpool and West Ham, the Portuguese has been confirmed as the new head coach of Manchester United and now has the chance to show why he has received so much hype.
He has been rewarded for biding his time and rejecting previous offers, landing the biggest job in English football. But it is also arguably the hardest. Many mangers with far more prestigious CVs than Amorim have been chewed up and spat out, incapable of stopping the rot that has set in ever since Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013. Just look at Amorim’s role model Jose Mourinho, the larger than life Louis van Gaal or Erik ten Hag, who was one of the top coaches in Europe when he took the poisoned chalice and stepped into the Old Trafford dugout.
The 39-year-old, who will be the youngest manager United have had since Wilf McGuinness in 1969, has already restored one creaking football institution to greatness, winning two league titles with Sporting – including their first in 19 years – plus two League Cups. He brings fresh ideas and a clear vision, a recognisable 3-4-3 formation and a reputation for overseeing blistering attacking football and goals aplenty.
But he will also have to deliver quickly, as his new employers have spent £8.3 million ($10.8m) to release him from his contract at Sporting, only four months after backing Ten Hag despite all the warning signs. GOAL breaks down the winners and losers as a new era is set to begin at Old Trafford…
WINNER: Bruno Fernandes
Bruno Fernandes paid tribute to Ten Hag just after he was sacked, saying: “I appreciate the trust and the moments we shared together.” He had plenty of reasons to be grateful to the manager, who stripped Harry Maguire of the captaincy to give Fernandes the armband and let him play almost every game, as well as delivering the only two trophies of the Portuguese’s four-year spell at the club. On the other hand, Fernandes had to carry the team on his back far too often and was left increasingly frustrated with the team’s results.
The midfielder, then, is likely to be excited about Amorim’s arrival, and not just because his new boss is Portuguese and worked wonders for his beloved former club Sporting. Earlier this year Fernandes expressed confidence that Amorim would be a success in one of Europe’s top five leagues, saying: “He has everything to take the next step. He is prepared for the next leap.”
The coach’s excellent track record should lift Fernandes’ hopes of enjoying his last few years at United, having recently signed a new contract until 2027. United’s No.8 galvanised the club when he joined from Sporting in 2020 and propelled them to successive top-three finishes. But his spell at Old Trafford has been thoroughly frustrating on the whole, yielding just one FA Cup and one Carabao Cup while being on the wrong end of numerous brutal thrashings, many of which he has been unfairly held responsible for.
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GettyLOSER: Sir Jim Ratcliffe
“INEOS never wants to be the dumb money in town, never,” Sir Jim Ratcliffe told The Times back in 2019, long before he had even considered buying his minority stake in the club. “They [United] are in quite a big pickle as a business. They haven’t got the manager selection right, haven’t bought well. They have been the dumb money, which you see with players like Fred. United have spent an immense amount since [Sir Alex] Ferguson left and been poor, to put it mildly. Shockingly poor, to be honest.”
Ratcliffe’s scathing comments still apply to the club five years on, but now it is the INEOS chief and billionaire who is burning the money. Sacking Ten Hag and replacing him with Amorim is set to cost United in the region of £30m ($39m) when you consider the compensation paid to the Dutchman (£13.5m), the cost of paying the new boss’s release clause (£8.3m), plus his annual salary (£6.8m). It is equivalent to the amount United hoped to save when they made 250 employees redundant this summer, causing misery to people who have served the club for so many years.
Amorim may turn out to be an excellent hire and vindicate the United hierarchy’s decision. But even if he does, he would have been in a far stronger position had he taken over the club last summer and had a pre-season under his belt, rather than being parachuted in with the team as close to the relegation zone as they are entering the top four, and having to wait three weeks before he can get started.
United may have made a glorious start to Ruud van Nistelrooy’s interim spell by destroying Leicester City in the Carabao Cup, but they will still feel in a state of limbo in their next three games – against Chelsea and Leicester in the Premier League, and PAOK in the Europa League – before having to adapt to yet another new coach. The upheaval just confirms the sense of chaos that remains around United, when Ratcliffe and INEOS had promised to promote a “best in class” culture.
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GettyWINNER: Manuel Ugarte
Tough-tackling Manuel Ugarte was signed to inject some power and energy into United’s ageing and lethargic midfield. However, Ten Hag did not believe he was worth picking in most games. The manager claimed that Ugarte needed some time to be integrated into the squad before he could be properly unleashed, saying “I’m not Harry Potter”. But as the weeks went by, he continued to overlook the £42m ($54m) recruit, handing him just one Premier League start, in the atrocious 3-0 defeat at home to Tottenham.
Ugarte was bafflingly left on the bench against Porto when the team were crying out for a ball-winner after throwing away their 2-0 lead, and he was also discarded throughout Ten Hag’s last game in charge at West Ham, despite impressing at Fenerbahce. He showed what he can offer against Leicester and should be even more excited about Amorim’s imminent arrival. He played under the coach at Sporting for two seasons, missing just three league games in his second campaign as his performances persuaded Paris Saint-Germain to part with €60m (£52m/$64m) to bring him to France.
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GettyLOSER: Ajax old boys
Ten Hag’s penchant for signing players that he used to coach at Ajax was a running joke for the entirety of his tenure. In his first summer in charge, he urged United to sign Lisandro Martinez and Antony, at great cost. Twelve months later, when he decided that David de Gea was no longer suitable to the type of football he wanted to play, he turned to another former charge in Andre Onana. The joke continued even after United’s new sporting director Dan Ashworth was brought in as Matthjis de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui were signed, taking the total number of Ten Hag’s former Ajax players in the United squad to five, at a combined cost of £250m ($324m).
The manager’s continued faith in Antony, particularly at the expense of the excellent Amad Diallo, led to the perception that Ten Hag had favourites and did not always pick his starting XI on merit. That safety net has, howeve, now gone. Amorim is unlikely to show the same patience with Antony and he is going to demand a lot more from De Ligt and Martinez, as his system requires the centre-backs to step into midfield. Mazraoui, meanwhile, will have to get used to playing as a wing-back.
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GettyWINNER: United fans
To be fair to Ten Hag, he gave United fans two memorable days at Wembley, delivering a first trophy in six years when his side beat Newcastle to win the Carabao Cup and then an unforgettable FA Cup final win over Manchester City. Leaving those two great days aside, watching United under the Dutchman often felt like a chore. And some matches were utter torture. Take the 7-0 battering by Liverpool at Anfield, the 4-0 demolition at Brentford or the chastening 3-0 home defeats by Liverpool, Tottenham and even Bournemouth.
The match-going supporters rarely took their anger out at Ten Hag, but very few fans were left mourning his sacking. Only David Moyes of the post-Ferguson coaches lost a greater percentage of matches in all competitions, and he was hounded out after nine months. Ten Hag clung on for too long and was left clutching to those Wembley memories because he had so few positive stories to tell.
Amorim, who led Sporting to win the title in his first full season in charge, brings a sense of hope, as well as the promise of exciting, attacking football. His side plundered 96 league goals last season and have already scored 30 from nine games in this campaign. United have scored just eight times in as many league matches, with three of them coming against winless Southampton.
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GettyLOSER: Thomas Frank and the over-looked coaches
United acted very swiftly to get their man and had began to negotiate with Sporting on the same day that Ten Hag’s dismissal was announced after they reportedly began reaching out to Amorim’s representatives during the October international break. Contrast that with their bumbling search for a new manager back in May, when they spoke to Thomas Frank, Kieran McKenna and Thomas Tuchel before deciding that Ten Hag was their man after all – only to sack him three months into the season.
Tuchel became unavailable when he accepted the England job and Frank, who attended Sir Dave Brailsford’s 60th birthday party earlier this year, must have felt hopeful of another call when he learned Ten Hag had been relieved of his duties. The Dane was given a ringing endorsement by Pep Guardiola only last month, with the Catalan insisting it was just “a question of time” before Frank got a high-profile job. He will have to keep waiting, as will the other candidates who were keeping a keen eye on Ten Hag’s future, such as Graham Potter.
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Getty/GOALWINNER: Rasmus Hojlund
It is an open secret that Harry Kane was Ten Hag’s favoured choice when United were shopping for strikers two summers ago, with the manager feeling that Rasmus Hojlund was too young and inexperienced to shoulder the burden of being the team’s main centre-forward. He did give the striker plenty of opportunities and called for patience when he failed to score in his first 15 Premier League games, but for one reason or another, he failed to get the best out of a player who cost £72m ($93m).
Hojlund might fare better under Amorim, who certainly knows how to get the best out of Scandinavian centre-forwards if his record with Viktor Gyokeres is anything to go by. The Swede, who joined Sporting from Championship side Coventry City in 2023, has scored an unreal 57 goals for Sporting within the last 15 months, dovetailing to devastating effect with wide forwards Francisco Trincao, Marcus Edwards and, more recently, teenage sensation Geovany Quenda.
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GettyLOSER: Sporting CP
United’s gain is definitely Sporting’s loss. The supporters’ sadness at losing the architect of their recent success was palpable ahead of their League Cup win over Nacional, when one fan interviewed on television started crying. Amorim’s eventual departure was always going to hurt, but it is extra painful to lose in the middle of the season when they were at their most potent, winning their opening nine games in the league and remaining unbeaten in the Champions League.
Before Amorim arrived on the scene in 2020, Sporting were a club in disarray. They endured perhaps the darkest day in their history as recently as 2018, when a group of masked fans attacked the players at their training ground, leading to an exodus of players as well as their coach, Jorge Jesus. Amorim had not only brought stability after years of chaos, he had turned Sporting back into the top force in the country after years of living in the shadow of neighbours Benfica and Porto to the north.
Sporting now have to scramble around for a successor, although they do at least have more time to find one after negotiating hard with United to ensure Amorim serves his notice period. At least they will be able to invest the compensation fee in searching for his replacement, and they cannot complain too much, as they prised Amorim from Braga in the middle of the 2019-20 season after paying a hefty release clause.
Source goal.com
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