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Rob Dawson, Correspondent
It was unseasonably bright for November when Ruben Amorim arrived at Carrington for the first time. As he stepped out of the black Mercedes van that took him straight to the training ground from Manchester Airport’s private terminal, he was met by Manchester United chief executive Omar Berrada, sporting director Dan Ashworth and technical director Jason Wilcox.
“You see the weather?” Amorim said with a beaming smile. Yet the sun didn’t last and by the time the Portuguese tactician held his first news conference as United’s new head coach two weeks later, the weather had turned to the usual winter rain and ice. It was so dark outside that extra lights had to be brought in to illuminate the room.
The brightness of Amorim’s honeymoon at Old Trafford hasn’t lasted long either.
On Wednesday, the 39-year-old celebrates one month in the job, and he’s already had to deal with the departure of Ashworth — exiting after just five months in the sporting director role — a row over the Premier League’s LGBTQ+ initiative, and Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s unpopular decision to raise ticket prices.
That’s on top of his main task of getting an underperforming team back on the right track despite having precious little time on the pitch during English’s football’s hectic festive fixture list. United have nine games (Premier League, Carabao Cup and Europa League) in December alone, with consecutive defeats to Arsenal and Nottingham Forest merely adding to the gloom.
“The storm will come,” warned Amorim after watching United beat Everton 4-0 in his third game in charge. It has perhaps arrived even sooner than he thought.
What Amorim has brought to Man United in his first month
Amorim’s appointment as Erik ten Hag’s successor was led, primarily, by Berrada. During negotiations, the newly installed CEO didn’t try to sugarcoat the size of the task, but sources have told ESPN that Amorim already believes the job will be more complicated than he first thought. His five games in charge have yielded two wins, two defeats, a draw, and a mixed bag of performances.
Parachuted into the job midseason, the former Sporting CP coach has tried to compensate for a lack of time on the training field with extended sessions on the full-size pitch in the academy hall. Ten Hag and his staff would primarily use the area for warm-ups, but Amorim conducts tactical walk-throughs focused on player positioning during different phases of the game.
Everyone is expected to take part, even if they’re just watching. Sources have told ESPN that Amorim doesn’t hold many individual meetings with players — those are left to his assistants — and as much of the work as possible is done as a team.
This team focus is one of the reasons Amorim was willing to back the squad’s decision to opt out of wearing specially made LGBTQ+ jackets ahead of the game of Everton after Noussair Mazraoui — a devout Muslim — chose not to take part on religious grounds. It follows the mantra that the squad either does it together or not at all.
Amorim also began defending his players in his first news conference before a ball was kicked. “I truly believe in the players,” he said. “I know you guys [the media] don’t believe a lot in these players, but I believe a lot.”
Sources familiar with the hiring process have told ESPN that part of Berrada’s interest in Amorim was driven by the bond he builds with his players. United chose to move on from Ten Hag in part because of a feeling that he could be too distant from the squad.
At 39, Amorim is still young enough to remember what he liked and disliked as a player during his spells at Benfica and Braga, and it’s shaped the way he coaches. It’s one of the reasons he doesn’t hold traditional postmatch team talks; instead, players are invited to hold their own debrief after the final whistle if they wish, and Amorim addresses them the following day. It gives him a chance to further analyse parts of the game and deliver a clear assessment once the emotion of matchday has died down.
He doesn’t do lengthy half-time team talks either, and often spends the majority of the break preparing his substitutes. He came out of the dressing room at half-time against Arsenal at the Emirates nearly 10 minutes before the restart to focus on giving instructions to Amad Diallo.
Having inherited a squad low on confidence, team spirit and togetherness is a priority. Players returning to training after injury are welcomed by running the gauntlet and getting playfully slapped on the head by the rest of the squad. He’s able to speak to players in English, Portuguese and Spanish, and has taken time to get to know their families.
Amorim is young and charismatic, but he’s not just at Old Trafford to be everyone’s friend. He was furious during the game against Everton that one of his substitutes wasn’t immediately ready to come on when he asked.
He has also introduced some strict rules like banning food in the dressing room on matchdays. Instead of doing MUTV interviews in a small room in the Jimmy Murphy Building frequently used by Ten Hag, he prefers to do them standing up in front of a sponsors backdrop in the reception area.
What month two at Man United will bring for Amorim
Amorim’s family are set to move to Manchester in January once his two young children have finished the first half of the school year. Currently staying in a city centre hotel, he’s looking for a house in the area. He’s planning to spend Christmas working — United face struggling Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux on Boxing Day — and will have a small celebration with his staff after training. Because of United’s hectic schedule with three matches between Dec. 22 and Dec. 30, his family will spend Christmas in Portugal and travel to Manchester in the new year.
The Christmas fixture list is something Amorim is working hard to manage, with sources at the club telling ESPN that he is relying heavily on performance data to decide which players can train and play. Any player close to the “red zone” is rested in an attempt to avoid injury. Amorim is well aware of the injury problems that played a part in Ten Hag’s downfall — long first-team absences from the likes of Lisandro Martinez, Luke Shaw and Tyrell Malacia plagued the Dutchman — and he’s determined to avoid a repeat.
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Minutes on the training pitch and in games are being managed carefully. Amorim is conscious that asking the squad to begin running more midway through the season is a tough task, particularly when preseason fitness levels were decided by another manager.
Former United boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer worked to improve the fitness of the players when he took over from José Mourinho in December 2018. It initially paid off, with United winning 14 of their first 17 games under the Norwegian, but their form fell off a cliff in March. United won just two of their final 12 games of the season, with player burnout considered a major factor in the decline. Sources told ESPN at the time that the data from a 2-0 defeat to Manchester City at Old Trafford in April 2019 showed that Pep Guardiola’s team were far fitter — exactly the scenario Amorim is keen to avoid.
Amorim’s former club, Sporting CP, is one of Portuguese football’s biggest names, but he’s admitted he’s still coming to terms with the size of United and attention that comes with it. But despite the mountain of media requests, he performs the ones he’s contractually obliged to do with the same smile he wore when he first arrived. Asked at the end of one interview to do a second take so the cameras could capture him walking into the room and shaking hands, he joked afterwards that his acting “should win the Oscar.”
Amorim, however, has his eyes firmly trained on winning other prizes. His first month at Old Trafford has shown him exactly how tough that might be.