At Manchester United, the Portuguese Rubén Amorim generates a lot of hope

Rubén Amorim has not yet taken up his duties as Manchester United manager and the expectations surrounding him are likely to complicate his task. Announced on the football club bench, on day 1^Ahem In November, the 39-year-old Portuguese coach officially begins his adventure in the north of England, on Monday, November 11, where some have made him assume the mantle of a providential man.

Before leaving his suitcases on the other side of the Channel, the coach, hired for 10 million euros, still had some obligations to fulfill with his former employer, Sporting Portugal. Including a Champions League match against the Red Devils’ great rival, Manchester City, which ended with a prestigious victory for the Lisbon team: 4-1.

It didn’t take much to get the machine off the ground. “Manchester United fans are already dreaming, Amorim has torn Pep Guardiola’s team to pieces”headline, the next day, The timeswhen he daily star He was ironic about the “rude awakening” offered by technician “your new neighbors”.

“United cannot play like Sporting”

The interested party knew that the result of this meeting could awaken emotions among the Old Trafford faithful, warning about the “misleading conclusions”. “If we win, they will think that the new Alex Ferguson [l’ancien entraîneur emblématique des Red Devils] “It has arrived and it will be very difficult to sustain.”he warned in a pre-match press conference. And insist, once again, at the end: “We cannot transpose one reality to another. United can’t play like that. [le Sporting]You can’t be so defensive. Of course, it’s good to beat City. But I will live in a different world, we have to start from a different point. »

Will the warning be enough to moderate the fans’ ardor? Nothing is less certain. Under the leadership of “Sir Alex”, between 1986 and 2023, Manchester United was one of the most feared teams in Europe. During his tenure, he won thirty-eight titles in all competitions, including thirteen Premier League and two Champions League titles. But the Scot’s departure left a void that the eight coaches who followed him never managed to fill. Since then, the fans have been waiting for who can restore the shine to the club.

Some people are already amused by the parallels between Alex Ferguson and Ruben Amorim. When the Glasgow native was named to the United bench in 1986, the club had 12 points after ten days of the championship… as many as when the arrival of the Lisbon native was announced, thirty-eight years later. Furthermore, neither had ever trained outside their home country before joining the Red Devils.

A group of young players

Rubén Amorim, who ended his professional playing career in 2017, became a coach starting with the 2018-19 season. After a brief spell at Braga, he signed for Sporting in March 2020 for a fee of 10 million euros. In his first full season in 2021-22, he won the championship, ending the club’s nineteen-year drought; Enough to elevate him among the representatives of the young guard of European technicians.

Coveted by several European teams – some even imagined him replacing Pep Guardiola at City, at the end of the Catalan’s contract in 2025 -, he signed for Manchester United when he was having a perfect start to the season with the Lisbon club, still undefeated in the League and European Cup.

Ruben Amorim, a fan of the 3-4-3 and who offers an offensive game, trusts in a group of young players to form his squad. The coach can boast of having launched Nuno Mendes, Matheus Nunes and Joao Palhinha with the colors of the Lisbon club; the latter have since joined Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City and Bayern Munich. Or, more recently, the Swedish Sporting, Viktor Gyökeres. Recruited in 2023 from Coventry City in the English D2, he is today the top scorer in Europe, with 23 goals in 18 games this season in all competitions, including a hat-trick against City. “I’m not going to sign [les joueurs de Sporting] in January, Rubén Amorim has already warned. I don’t know about summer. The main thing is to hold on until then. Then we’ll see. »

In the absence of his troops, the coach will try to import his playing philosophy to the other side of the English Channel. Although the challenge that awaits him is different, especially taking into account the size of the Manchester United institution, and the pressure he will have to face are not the same. He will have the difficult task of trying to put the northern English club back in the spotlight, which has not won the championship since 2013.