Inside story of how Man Utd appointed Ruben Amorim after Erik ten Hag left ‘devastated’

Revealed: Behind-the-scenes talks with Sporting Lisbon to get Amorim quickly and why it took so long to sack Ten Hag

The new Manchester United chief executive, Omar Berrada, sacked Erik ten Hag on Monday morning and then boarded a flight to Lisbon to tell Sporting face to face that United wanted their manager Ruben Amorim – and they wanted him as soon as possible.
That morning, Berrada, who officially joined United on July 13, and his new sporting director, Dan Ashworth, had dismissed Ten Hag.
The Dutchman had lasted two years, six months and seven days at Old Trafford. The settlement was generous but that meant little to Ten Hag. He was devastated that it was over. Ashworth stayed to support the club’s interim coach, Ruud Van Nistelrooy. In Lisbon, Berrada met Sporting’s president, Frederico Varandas, and its sporting director, Hugo Viana, who was also on his way to Manchester City.
Amorim had told them that he wanted the United job so negotiations were opened over the terms of his departure. A €10 million (£8.4 million) release clause was payable and a 30-day notice period in place. Sporting proposed an additional €5 million fee to release Amorim after the club’s games against Manchester City, in the Champions League, and the 39-year-old’s former club, Braga, in the Portuguese league on Nov 10. United countered with an extra €1 million – €11 million in total – to take him immediately.
The clubs eventually settled on that fee for Amorim’s release on Nov 11. Berrada flew back on Tuesday night. The completed deal for Amorim was announced by United at noon on Friday, in a low-key statement that acknowledged Amorim would be Sporting’s coach for two further games. In addition, he will conduct an official Uefa press conference as Sporting manager in Lisbon on Monday for many of the same Manchester media he will meet as United manager later this month. An awkward situation, but it was Sporting’s wish he saw out the two final games.
United have made some consequential signings from Sporting over the years. They were aware that taking Sporting’s coach mid-season, in a year when they were defending the Portuguese title, ahead of a month in which they face the Premier League’s two best sides in the Champions League, would be a painful experience. There was no alternative, as United saw it, than to turn up in person and negotiate in good faith. Amorim had been their only choice to succeed Ten Hag.
How did it come to this? Just 116 days after United exercised the option of a one-year contract extension for Ten Hag after a prolonged period of uncertainty, the Dutchman was dismissed for reasons that were often evident during most of last year and long periods of this one. Ten Hag left United with two trophies, one in each of his two full seasons, a third-place finish in the first of those and some themes that had haunted him consistently. United’s league form tells the story: 22 defeats from 61 games after their League Cup win in February 2022 and 82 goals conceded, equal to those scored. Their eighth place last season was the club’s worst finish of the Premier League era
If Ten Hag was the wrong man now, why did United back him in June?
The short answer: the club did not feel ready for change then. Ten Hag’s new contract was announced on July 4. Berrada did not start in his role for another nine days and Ashworth would come later. Both had leave periods agreed with their former clubs, City and Newcastle United respectively. How much that restricted their informal involvement it is hard to say. What is not in doubt is that neither were at Carrington or United so could not take the temperature at the training ground or among the players. In short, neither could do their jobs properly – whatever views they might have formed from afar.
Of the new leadership team, only Jason Wilcox, who joined officially from Southampton on April 19, was in position by the end of June. Ineos, under the leadership of Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sir Dave Brailsford, had engaged conversations with potential managerial recruits in the weeks before. That was regarded as an emergency exercise to ensure they did not miss out on an outstanding candidate during a summer in which many big clubs were in the market for managers. Whatever the logic, it certainly looked messy from the outside. That was the price Ineos paid for exploring alternatives to Ten Hag.
While it looked dire for Ten Hag, the reality at the club was different – and played in his favour. There was no leadership team in place to appoint and support a new manager. Their Carrington training ground was undergoing major construction that meant the first team had to move into a temporary location to train.
Ten Hag was in situ and knew the squad and the club. Ineos felt that, for all his stubbornness and the problems he had failed so far to solve – the openness of the team, especially in midfield and its propensity to concede – he had never had the support a United manager needed. Perhaps Ten Hag could arrest the slump in league form with the first purpose-built leadership team United had assembled since the Sir Alex Ferguson era.
United had three chief executives over the 2023-24 season alone. First the incumbent during the opening period of the Glazer sale, Richard Arnold; his temporary successor Patrick Stewart, the club’s legal counsel; and then Jean-Claude Blanc, the Ineos Sport chief executive brought in to steady the ship. John Murtough, previously United’s de-facto director of football, had left in April.
The club had been through the damaging Jadon Sancho episode soon after the Cristiano Ronaldo episode and various other damaging fallouts. The volatility of results, and the tumult of the Glazer sale that became a partial sell-off, underpinned the general uncertainty. There had been recruitment disasters and a stupendous injury crisis.
With no clear alternative and no leadership team in place to run a process, and with Ten Hag convinced he could thrive under a new support structure, the manager was retained. Given how public Ineos’s consultations with alternatives had been, before and after the FA Cup final on May 25, United needed to be seen to back their man. Not to give him an extra year would have made their words of support ring hollow. It shut down scepticism elsewhere that they were simply nudging a dead man walking back into play. That, at least, was the rationale.
Results would ultimately prove the club wrong and propel it down another course.
United’s trading in the summer had been solid, albeit with the jury out on some new players. The new recruitment team ran the operation, listening to input from Ten Hag that carried weight but that was not definitive. Of all the signings, the Dutch coach was perhaps most enthusiastic about Matthijs de Ligt. At the cost level it made sense to United. The likes of Leny Yoro, Noussair Mazraoui, Joshua Zirkzee and Manuel Ugarte were club-led signings, and they were not all unqualified successes. Zirkzee is Dutch but had never played under Ten Hag. Mazraoui, who had, was a cost-effective replacement for Aaron Wan-Bissaka.
By September, United had a full leadership team in place. As well as Berrada, Ashworth and Wilcox, there was Sam Erith, the director of performance, whose contract is expected to be extended beyond this year. So too is Chris Vivell’s. Formerly at Chelsea, he is in charge of recruitment of younger players. The club was in a much more solid position than it had found itself at the end of June. Which was just as well because as results for Ten Hag fell off a cliff, it was about to appoint a new manager.
Berrada and Ashworth had explicitly backed Ten Hag in an interview given to media provided it was published after the club’s home league fixture against Liverpool on Sept 1. That, unfortunately for United, ended 3-0 to the visitors, a second defeat in just the third game of the season. Yet the sentiment was genuine. The club were fully behind Ten Hag. Replacing him mid-season would suit no one, but it would quickly turn out to be the only realistic option.
The club had hoped that the problem was structural and once the right pieces were in place, the fruits of Ten Hag’s coaching and management would become evident. But that was not the case. United’s record in the league this season continued in the same dismal trajectory as last term. Since a four-game winning run in February took United to within five points of fourth place, they have taken 27 points from 22 league games.
The 3-0 home defeat to Tottenham Hotspur on Sept 29 was the point at which the club recognised that, at the very least, it was obliged to decide who would be the alternative if it had to make a change. Nine days later at a scheduled meeting of club department heads at Ineos headquarters in Knightsbridge, it was decided Ten Hag should continue. Or rather: he was not sacked. As with any manager at any club, the support of board or owners is not an open-ended contract. A manager is backed until he is not.
Nevertheless, United looked ever more vulnerable. The expected goals-against metric consistently exceeded its counter goals-for xG. It was clear then that although Ten Hag had turned around previous bad runs, this was a trend that showed no sign of changing.
The end of the Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer eras had been followed by long-running interim appointments that yielded mixed results. United could not afford the same to happen again, and neither could they go through the exploratory conversations that had been pursued in the summer, before the arrival of Berrada and Ashworth. They needed a first-choice candidate. That was quickly identified as Amorim.
Via personal testimony sought by the leadership team, and data analysis of his record, Amorim scored highly in every key area his personality, his man-management and his ability to communicate ideas to players. There was the fit with the United squad and the value he has added to the two senior club teams he has managed. Also valued was his preferred style of playing on the front foot, controlling games and tactical flexibility. He is most commonly associated with a three-man backline and wing-backs but the analysis showed that came with many variations. A wing-back balanced by a more conventional full-back on the other side. A No 9 backed by two No 10s, or alternatively by two No 8s. The analysis showed that he was by no means dogmatic in his approach and was willing to adapt.
United discreetly established Amorim had a way out of his contract and that he was prepared to join them mid-season. After defeat by West Ham on Sunday, the decision was made to dismiss Ten Hag the next day. That same day, Amorim told Verandas that he wished to be given permission to speak to United. Within an hour Berrada called Verandas and was in Lisbon by Monday evening to meet in person.
The deal that was eventually struck by Wednesday, for Amorim to join United after the Braga game on Nov 10, gave the new coach the international break to orientate himself at the club. That had value for United and they were prepared to put a price on that early release from his 30-day notice, although one they would not go beyond that. For Sporting it has been an emotional 36 hours. One of the greatest coaches in their history will say farewell in 10 days.
Amorim has a contract until 2027 with an extra year as an option. The recruitment of some or all of Amorim’s staff will play out over the days that follow, and so too the futures of Van Nistelrooy, Darren Fletcher and Ten Hag’s assistants, Rene Hake and Andreas Georgson. Amorim will have the title of head coach and will answer to Ashworth, as does Erith, Wilcox and their counterparts in data analysis, recruitment and medical.
It has been a rapid change since Christmas Eve, when Ratcliffe, Ineos and the Glazers agreed a price for the 27.7 per cent stake that was sold and the scope of influence it brought. Not everything has changed, as the patchwork profile of the squad demonstrates. But a great deal, including the manager, is new – a change that Ineos and its leadership team at first resisted. History will judge that to have been the wrong strategy. Certainly the circumstances have changed in the four months since then – as Amorim’s swift appointment demonstrates.