“I’m here to be the manager, not just the coach,” said the Portuguese coach yesterday. And this morning he was shown the door. For now, the team will be led by assistant Fletcher

Ruben Amorim is no longer the coach of Manchester United. “With the team in sixth place in the standings, the club has reluctantly made the decision to change, believing that this is the best time to do so. This will give the team the chance to finish the Premier League season in the best possible position,” the club announced in a statement released at 11:08 a.m. Italian time. The team, which plays Burnley on Wednesday in the 21st round of the Premier League, will now be led by Darren Fletcher, and the selection of a new permanent coach may be postponed until the summer. Behind the diplomatic language of the official statements, however, lies the reality of a sensational rift between Amorim and the United management, played out in public and with all the drama of a soap opera, in perfect Red Devils style after Sir Alex Ferguson, a decade in which the trophies won are far fewer than the coaches who have come and gone.
Amorim made his break yesterday, after the draw with Leeds. “I came here to be the manager of Manchester United, not just the coach,” he told reporters at Elland Road. “I want to make that clear, and I want it to be known that this will be the case for the next 18 months or until the management decides to change.” The jab at the management was so harsh that the United hierarchy, led by CEO Omar Berrada and sporting director Jason Wilcox, had already decided last night to sack Amorim, but preferred to take a night to reflect before immediately announcing yet another change. With those statements, the culmination of tensions that had become public before Christmas, it was clear that the marriage between Amorim and United could not last. The Portuguese coach, who in November 2024 had been snatched from Sporting, where he had established himself as one of the best young coaches in Europe, for €11 million, had reluctantly decided to abandon the 3-4-2-1 formation on which he had built his successes, partly because “if we bought the players I need to play that way, we would have to spend a lot of money.” He also reiterated in the press conference before Leeds that the club could not afford to satisfy him in the transfer market. Despite the poor results, despite 2024-25 going down as the club’s worst ever season in the Premier League (and the worst since relegation in 1973-74), the management ultimately decided to sack Amorim for what he said, for a relationship that had deteriorated rapidly, under the astonished gaze of the press and fans.

failure—  And so the Amorim era comes to an end after just 14 months as yet another technical failure in the post-Ferguson era, the first official one of the Ineos era. It is also a financial failure, because, as stipulated in the contract, United will have to pay the Portuguese coach’s full salary until the natural expiry of the agreement at the end of June 2027. In November 2024, Amorim was persuaded to leave Sporting to join United: he was supposed to be a turning point, even tactically, given that he had always used a 3-4-2-1 formation in his career, not the 4-2-3-1 with which the Red Devils had been built. The Portuguese coach endured too many disappointing results and criticism for his lack of flexibility, refusing to abandon a formation that was clearly unsuited to the players at his disposal. Things were improving slightly on the pitch this season, thanks in part to the €230 million spent in the transfer market to rebuild the attack and the absence of cup competitions, which meant more time to train and absorb a new philosophy. Behind the scenes, however, the situation quickly deteriorated, with Amorim unhappy with some of the club’s transfer decisions (one example being the young goalkeeper Senn Lammens being preferred to Emi Martinez, whom the coach had specifically requested) and the gap between him and the club widening. The last straw for Amorim came before Christmas when the management insisted on a change of formation, which he reluctantly obeyed. From then on, however, his barbs became increasingly heavy and increasingly targeted. Until his outburst in Leeds, which was the last straw for the club. His 14 months at the Red Devils remain unfinished business, a wind of change that, instead of bringing improvements, has worsened the situation. In true United style: lots of talk, lots of smoke, and no fire.