The Rise, fall and rise again of Ruben Amorim Part 2

I've been thinking long and hard about where to start part II of this post on Ruben Amorim in which I am to make the case as to why he's a great coach. I thought I'd settled on beginning with Sebastián Coates as my lead in example as to why he's a great coach. My father's favourite joke is I used to be indecisive, now I'm not so sure. At least I know where I get it from. I finally decided to begin with a comparison which to be fair some reading this might not get the reference to but for those who know, you know. The writer Mick Herron has the most amazing series of books which Apple TV have turned into the TV Programme Slow Horses both of which I genuinely love. The premise of the story is a group of MI5 agents who for a series of misdemeanours get sent to work in Slough House. Slow Horses being a derogatory term for the agents derived from Slough House; Slow sounding like Slough and.. oh you get it, I'll shut up then. On the one hand they were considered good enough at one time to have been agents for the British Secret Service but on the other, they're all fuck ups. Despite their failings somehow they do manage to all pull in the same direction, overcome the odds and achieve results that the officers in the main hub of Regents Park can't achieve. If we start with the 2020/21 season in Portugal's top flight you could rightly claim that Benfica or Porto are in this comparison Regents Park. The José Alvalade is Slough House, the Sporting squad are the Slow Horses which makes Ruben Amorim the Jackson Lamb character, just maybe with a lot less drinking, smoking and farting. Both however are somehow getting a tune out of their team when it's like having both hands tied behind your back. The Portuguese footballing Slow Horses won the 2020/21 title, Sporting's first in 19 years and I'll have a quid with you that no one else has made the comparison of Ruben Amorim to Jackson Lamb. I mean there's a good reason for that if you've seen Gary Oldman in the TV series. The actual point of course being that to win that first title was nothing short of a minor miracle which by rights makes Amorim a coaching genius. If you can win the Portuguese Liga with that squad of players he's got to be good right? Am I asking you or myself that question? Probably more myself. In that case - Yes. Yes it does. The football wasn't great on the eye but upon reflection of the two league titles he won, that's the better one. 

Sporting might have won all 17 games at home last season when they won their second league title in four seasons. That first title winning season they lost once all season. One lousy 90 minutes away from an unbeaten season. Played against the backdrop of Covid lock downs and empty stadiums with players separated from their loved ones for long periods of time, I genuinely thought we'd blown it during the run in. Porto who finished second only lost twice that season and in the end we took the title by five points.

I'll concede Slow Horses is a little bit dramatic of a comparison but we all enjoy a bit of drama. If you've not read the first part of this two part series in which I make the case against Amorim as being a great coach, make sure you do and look for the section on Amorim's use of the word suffering. Dear Lord did we suffer that season. Only Sporting can do drama with that real intense level of suffering thrown in. We went away to Braga, the club we'd paid €10m for the misters services the season before. Had there been a full stadium you can bet they'd have been at their old coach for the full 90, the atmosphere would have been nothing but toxic. Now full disclosure I've never seen this game back in full, this is my memory of the game and bear in mind this is taking place on April 25th, 2021. After 9 minutes defender Gonçalo Inácio gets his first yellow card. After 17 minutes Inácio gets his second yellow card and his marching orders. This is a game according to the statistics where Braga had 17 attempts on goal. It felt more like 37. We were watching our title hopes disappearing one minute at a time. Braga would surely find the winner at some point. Sporting had 181 passes total. When we beat them 4-2 last Sunday Sporting had 541 and Braga had 189. Ten men managed one solitary shot on target in 90 minutes and finished with an XG of 0.19. But miraculously that one shot from a side who defended with their backs to the wall for 73 minutes was good enough for a 1-0 win and to leave me sobbing like a baby come the final whistle. I know for a fact I wasn't the only one. Coates in my mind was like Bobby Moore that day and I'll never watch the game back because I don't want to shatter that illusion. Also because I'm not sure my heart and nerves would take it again even if I knew the result. So OK not the level of England's World Cup winning Captain but the stats do show Coates made 9 clearances that day, Feddal had 7. If you read my last Braga blog you know that their stadium is built on a former granite site. Well they threw granite at us that day, the kitchen sink, they threw everything they had. That was the single best defensive performance I've seen from a Sporting side. Pahlinha was a colossus in central midfield and Adán wasn't going to be beaten if they played 180 minutes that night in goal. That side was the design of one man, the mister that is Ruben Amorim who let's not forget at the time was just 35. 

Fine I'll concede that side wasn't really a team of Slow Horses. However they weren't a team of superstars and that's the real point. At no point has Amorim had a team of big money signings at his disposal although you could argue for Sporting and Portugal that €20m for Viktor Gyökeres is a big money signing but he came from Coventry City in the Championship and no one knew he'd be the player he'd turned out to be. For a large part of the first full season we were reliant on Tiago Tomás up front. Never heard of him? Well there's a reason why if you're not a Sporting fan. He was and remains quite frankly dog shit. He is a true Slow Horse. He's the Roddy Ho of strikers. 9 goals in 66 games for Sporting. Viktor Gyökeres has 66 also - not appearances, but goals, in two games more. At least once every two months I'll chuckle to myself at the notion that we won a title with Tomás up front. Unbelievable Jeff to borrow a phrase from Soccer Saturday. 

That season Amorim brought in Nuno Mendes who would play 47 games in total at the age of 18. The faith and belief that Amorim puts in youth is genuinely next level. He's given over two dozen academy players their debut at Sporting. If there were kids in the Sporting academy crying the day he left for Manchester thinking their route to the first team has gone, you've got to envisage there were kids at United's academy thinking all their Christmases have come at once. United's youngest player record has stood since October 24th, 1956 when David Gaskell made his debut at the age of 16 years and 19 days. I'm telling you that you should expect that record to be broken. Dário Essugo was 16 years and 6 days old when he came on as substitute for his debut against Vitória de Guimaraes. He left the field in tears at becoming Sporting's youngest ever player, it had meant that much to him as a fan of the club himself. 

Every season Amorim puts the faith in youngsters. Geovany Quenda is still just 17 having made his debut against Porto this summer in the Super Taça. Not only did he play against Manchester City in the Champions League game, he started and played 85 minutes and has featured in 11 matches to date before Amorim's departure. Age isn't a barrier for the mister and as I wrote in my last blog the thing the English media are missing is that if he is wedded to his 3-4-3 he's not trying to fit square pegs into round holes. If he rates an academy player he'll play them over a player that might be on £100,000 plus a week. United players are going to have a real wake up call. He doesn't care who you are. If your face doesn't fit then you won't be there long. If you thought it was brutal at Chelsea at points during the summer with the way they treated some of their squad players you've seen nothing yet. You'll not shake me from the opinion that the reason Amorim has got the United gig is that the new structure above want the club to be bringing through talent from the academy and not wasting billions on transfer fees and wages. 

At Sporting Amorim had the luxury of being given time. He didn't have the expectations from the fans and the media that he'll get at United. In Portugal the expectation generally will be that Benfica or Porto will win the title. This is probably the first time in 25 years or more that Sporting have started as genuine title favourites. That is how big the shift has been in the club's fortunes under Amorim. I'll repeat what I wrote in Part I, none of this has happened overnight. Yes OK he won the title in his first full season but in a normal season we run Benfica and Porto close but I'm not sure we'd have won it. Fast forward to today and this is still a side of rag tag players brought in from low level club's around the footballing world. Only Trincão can lay claim to having played at a club of the size and stature of Barcelona. Watch the quality of Sporting's second goal against Manchester City finished by Maxi Araújo signed in the summer from Toluca. It's a goal of real quality but your starter for ten is which league do Toluca ply their trade in? No googling. Manchester City went to the José Alvalade unbeaten in 27 Champions League matches. That's the same Manchester City who'd won the Premier League the previous four seasons on the trot. I'm going to list the Sporting starting XI that night in relation to the clubs each player came from; Juventus development squad, Anderlecht, FC Midtjylland, Rio Ave, Sporting's academy, Lecce, Santa Clara, Toluca, Barcelona, Coventry City and Famalicão. I mean pardon my French but fuck me when you write it down and examine the game in that context then you cannot argue that Amorim isn't one hell of a footballing coach. Round pegs for round holes. Let's double down here and look at the bench by the same metric; Mainz 05, Amora FC, FC Nordsjælland, Raków, Real Valladolid, Braga, Vitória de Guimaraes and four academy players. Sporting clearly have not been spending £1.8 billion like United have on players to get them title wins. Just for reference in Portugal and in Europe generally a title win is the name bestowed to winning any competition domestically or in European competition whereas in England winning the title is reference only to winning a league title. So if light is made to Amorim winning five titles with Sporting then that's two league titles, two Taça da Ligas and the Supertaça. The Taça da Liga is the league cup equivalent, the Supertaça the Charity Shield but it is definitely a trophy in Portugal which is why José Mourinho counts his actual Charity Shield as a trophy because in Portugal it would be exactly that. Amorim also won a Taça da Liga at Braga, so six titles all before the age of 40 ladies and gentlemen. Who said yeah but it's all in Portugal at the back of the room? Hush your dissenting voice. So rude. Maybe read Part I whilst we all discuss Amorim in all his glory. As one reader rightly pointed out after the end of the part I at least I got all the negativity out in the one post. 

Can Amorim improve players is one of the biggest questions? Remember way back at the start when I said I was originally going to wade in with Sebastián Coates as my starting point? Well I don't think there's going to be a better example. I know I compared him to Bobby Moore earlier. That was one 90 minutes when he gave a 10/10 performance. Clearly that wasn't him every week, that was literally his best performance probably ever for any side throughout his entire career. The journey he came on under Amorim though was truly astonishing. Like many others I had a few tears in my eyes when Coates announced unexpectedly in the summer that he wasn't taking up the option of a contract extension with Sporting and was instead returning to Nacional in Uruguay where he started his footballing career, owing to a family illness back in his native country. He originally signed on loan from Sunderland in January of 2016 before making the move permanently at the start of February 2017. This was the infamous defender who gave away three penalties on August 31st, 2019 at home to Rio Ave in a 3-2 defeat and was given his marching orders for a second yellow after the third of three penalties was conceded. Now for context this was before the days of VAR. For the second penalty Coates doesn't even make contact with the player. The Rio Ave forward has done the referee like a kipper with the play acting on that one. The first and third have minimal contact and the guy has gone down three times like he's been shot by Charles in the Day of the Jackal. Look at me with the up to date cultural references for once, that's two in one post. 

The version of Coates we saw pre-Amorim was quite frankly a fucking liability in defence. My favourite analogy is that he runs like he's pulling an invisible caravan behind him. He didn't have the legs in his late 20s let alone his early 30s and that was before his knees started to go. I've a vision of him desperately trying to track back one game and being 20 yards behind the guy who slots it past Patricio and I'm sat there thinking fuck me did this guy really play in the Premier League for Liverpool? Again like the Bobby Moore reference I'm doing it from memory and doing him a massive disservice I'm sure. He could have been 5 yards behind but it might as well have been 20. 

If you'd have told me in 2016 I'd have had tears in my eyes when Coates left the club I'd have had tears in my eyes…from laughing so much. Amorim turned him into the lynchpin of his defence. He was the leader of the side, the player that epitomises the never say die spirit that encapsulated both of Sporting's title wins. Somehow Amorim left you the impression that Coates has always been a great defender. It's amazing what putting two kids either side of him has done when they do all the running and he does the orchestrating at the back. Without this version of Coates crafted by Amorim you don't have the version of Gonçalo Inácio that is apparently so coveted by some of Europe's elite sides. Inácio always looked better with Coates to his right. Take Coates out and put Inácio in the centre of the three and you discover how fallible he is as a defender. If this was a wine blog we'd be using the analogy of grating vines with Coates as the original vine but thankfully for you dear readers it's not so I'll quickly move on. 

Hidemasa Morita the Japanese midfielder came in from Santa Clara on a free transfer and quickly forged a reputation for being a gritty midfielder who was pretty much guaranteed a yellow card every time he played. Whereas now unless it's a tactical foul you don't see that side of his game anymore. He's really blossomed into a truly great midfielder with the ability to make things happen in the final third even when the opposition are touch tight. He has a wonderful sense for positioning and Japan are benefiting from it too. At the time of writing Japan won 4-0 earlier today, he scored and was man of the match. 

Morten Hjulmand since being given the Captain's armband after Coates departure has gone up another level. You can see what that decision meant to him and like Coates he takes that responsibility incredibly seriously. So seriously I was worried he might have a heart attack the first couple of games he was raging that much. 

Sometimes it is hard to gauge how Amorim has developed players. Of course it's not just him, his coaching staff clearly play a huge role. The simple reason being as previously mentioned that two dozen plus players have come from the academy and so many others haven't lasted the test of time. It is really easy to forget how young some of these players are. Take the defence as an example, you've Quaresma and Debast vying for the right side of the 3 at 22 and 19 years of age. Diomande centrally is 20 and Inácio is now the old man at 23 of the quartet. The oldest player in the squad is Ricardo Esgaio at 31 and there was a chance he'd leave in the summer and go back to Braga but that never materialised. 

Amorim clearly inspires his players. He gives them self belief. Makes them go out onto the pitch believing they are as a sum of their parts the best team in Portugal and you know what Amorim has left them as just that. For now they are head and shoulders the best side in Portugal. This is a team that has scored over 500 goals under Amorim. Now bear in mind they scored just 65 in the Liga in the first full season under him. 96 in a 34 game league campaign last season is ridiculous and the end figure was well over the 100 mark factoring in all competitions. 

Hopefully he's leaving the club with solid foundations. They are certainly in a better place than when he took over. I won't go over that ground again but it's all in a recent post if you want to go back and look it up. 

I love the misters leadership structure throughout the team with multiple captains. They all play their part in ensuring the right atmosphere. He's forged a winning mentality. Winning is a great habit to have. He's got a harmonious group of players. How many times do we read or hear from the media about players not playing for the manager. How has he achieved this when other coaches fail? Well the answer was in the first post. He doesn't wait for those players to have that same effect they do at other clubs, they're out on their ear. Rashford may well have been the beloved son of the red side of Manchester but it wouldn't surprise me if Amorim moved him on quickly in the summer. Take two examples from last season; Luís Neto and Viktor Gyökeres, two players who let's be fair hardly go hand in hand. Neto, 35 at the time and in the last year of his contract barely got a kick all season and yet is perceived to have played a pivotal role in the title win. Part of the captaincy team his importance was felt off the pitch as much as the other players' performances on it. The Gyökeres part of the tale came when his agent started making noises in the press and the club shut him down in super fast time. He was busy trying to engineer a summer move for his client and the club held fast on their stance that any club who wanted him had to pay the €100m release clause. It was a proper show of power from a football club. Speculation continues in England especially that he'll move in January but the aforementioned clause is only optional in the summer market. So if the club don't want to sell him then he won't go. It appears the deal has been done between club and player to let him go next summer at a reduced fee. 

I titled the blog the rise and fall and rise of Amorim because I truly believe he was lucky to still be in a role to have won the title again last season. But stay he did and we've clearly benefited because he won another title when had they not paid a fee for him he'd have been gone. I think this second part may have to be subtitled the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Chronicle. I hope you'll see the calmer Amorim he's grown to be crouching on the touchline. I hope he doesn't unravel and the dragon part will be the mythical side where you're not quite sure how he gets his side to fly. Time will tell. He genuinely seems to be a nice man but behind the smile is a ruthlessness he'll need to survive in the Premier League. I could argue that Amorim is too wedded to his 3-4-3 system. The counter argument is he has developed a system which allows players to thrive under the right conditions.

I heard someone say this week that Ten Hag tried to introduce his Ajax system at United, lost his two opening games and the pressure of being United boss saw him revert straight back to his old system. Amorim does not succumb to media pressure. He'll be Burnley's Vincent Kompany mark II. He doesn't bite and is definitely his own man and knows his own mind. See his parting quote I used in Part I. He wasn't always the calm coach we saw at Sporting at the end of his reign. Early on we'd frequently see him watching games from the stands whilst serving suspensions for being sent off. He can now handle the pressure and he's going to need that same level head at United. I keep going back to how long it's taken him to build this side into his image. One headline I read is that the 4-1 City result will have Pep running scared ahead of him taking over at United. Pep will point out that his City side took apart Amorim's earlier Sporting side 5-0 in the Champions League and I'm amazed people get paid to write the shit they do. Before anyone gets any clever ideas I'm not paid to write this shit. 

In five years Amorim has made himself into one of the most sought after coaches in Europe. His release clause remained at €20m and it was a separate clause in his contract that allowed United to pick him up for €11m. Even if he doesn't win a trophy with United, if he brings through academy players with the same rate and success he did at Sporting then that will be worth the fee paid. He's coming in to help transform the club's DNA albeit it at United maybe that should read that he's come to reset the DNA to where it was in 1992. If he outstays Pep at City then his chances of success will rise. Mind you that's a given for any coach in the Premier League. 

From a Sporting perspective it's hard to believe he can't then go onto forge a team at United that won't swat away teams in the lower half of the table. If they get decent draws in the cups they can have a good run in all those competitions. If United fans can accept they may not come out on top in the big games in the first season or two but they'll play entertaining football and are willing to go along for the ride then by seasons three and four he will have the platform to kick on. Manchester United as a name still carries the weight of expectation with it which is daft and the only reason it does is because of history and the fact it keeps sports media outlets in business. If fans and the media tempered their expectations and let go of the past the club could have rebuilt a long time ago. If they lose patience and faith with Amorim too soon I think they'll be making a mistake. Remember I mentioned Marco Silva at Sporting in post I, well look at the job he's doing in West London for them now. That's been a ten year journey for him. It could be the same for Amorim. No one knows. We're all peeing into the wind hoping our shoes don't get splashed. Actually I'm not because I don't care. I genuinely don't care. Twenty years ago I'd maybe have been raging. Now I'd have been more worried if he didn't want to try and better himself. Sure he's moving from a 3 horse league to a 4 horse one, but his horse isn't yet in the race.

I'd be a bloody hypocrite if I was annoyed at him for leaving because I stand by my claims he's only lasted this long because the hierarchy at Sporting desperately wanted to cash in on him and weren't going to sack him having paid €10m for his service's. That's not me being lemon and writing that after the Lord Mayor's Show. 

I genuinely have never made my mind up about Amorim and now I'm relieved because I don't have to. I'm still 50/50. This current Sporting side have made the start to the season they have because Amorim threatened to leave in a very public manner and the condition of him staying was he got to go next summer and this season Gonçalves, Inácio, Hjulmand and Gyökeres all stayed unless someone paid their termination clause. Importantly he also wanted to stay until the end of the season when this opportunity came about, it was United who said it's now or never and after five titles I can't begrudge him his dream job. He's a Benfica fan coaching Sporting after all. I'd happily make him a cup of tea and open the good biscuits for him. He makes his debut in England 25 miles down the road from me so he's welcome to pop in en route home. 

Look I've argued both positions now for and against. He's given me incredible memories and he's also at times left me calling for his head. But isn't that true of any coach? That's how football works. That's why it's a drug and fans spend their summers pining for the league campaign to start again. Maybe one day he'll race cars. Maybe one day he'll be Benfica president. Maybe he'll be Portugal coach. He may be the man that leads United back to the promised land. He'll always be the man who led Sporting to their first two titles in my time following the club which I never truly believed would happen even on the odd occasion we did come close. So obrigado Rúben and bonne chance. I won't be tuning in because I turned my back on the English game and fell in love with Sporting instead. There will be a little spot in my heart for you and a large part in my head shouting you're Emperor's New Clothes!!!

I'm not stupid enough to think he was creating a dynasty with Sporting. We could nose dive off a cliff before January. Ultimately it could come in the summer when we sell the likes of Gyökeres but that's OK. I didn't fall in love with Sporting because they were good. Ironically we'd all be a lot more miserable if we didn't have something to moan about. I'll leave you thinking about that.

Part I can be found here;

https://outsideofthepride.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-rise-fall-and-rise-again-of-ruben.html

A deeper look at the transfers under Hugo Viana can also be found here;

https://outsideofthepride.blogspot.com/2024/11/top-ten-signings-under-hugo-viana-at.html