For the age of Amorim, this Manchester derby feels like a decisive moment

The Guardian

05-04-2025

This brave overhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, this collection of generic spires with a massive plastic handkerchief chucked over the top. Three weeks on from first sight of the conceptual drawings for Sir Jim Ratcliffe's stately pleasure dome, also known as the proposed Manchester United Stadium Soccer Product Hub, there is still a sense of double-take about the whole thing.
Early impressions of the new ground ranged from a defunct Venusian mercury mine, to Dubai Butlin's, to a pointed corporate monument to our divided world. Welcome to the Staff Lunch Arena, embodiment of the 21st-century conviction that if you just stopped buying so many sandwiches and also fired the tea lady you could probably afford a vast and unattainable house.
The stadium project has at least brought into sharper focus the transient world in which Manchester United must now exist, shadowed not just by ghosts of the past but the ghost of the future too. This is already an entity engaged in a constant struggle with itself. For now the new development will remain just another zone of conflict, another front on which the club must lobby and balance competing interests, confirmation that the state of unresolvable civil war has now spread to the ground beneath its feet. And that there is, as ever, something rotten in the state of Denmark.
With this in mind it feels appropriate the first home Premier League game of the post-plans era should be a derby visit from Manchester City on Sunday afternoon. Who are Manchester United's biggest rivals these days anyway? For so long the answer to this was Liverpool. City have inserted themselves into this dynamic by sheer weight of success. Otherwise the real enemies at Manchester United are now within, a roster of internecine battles that have tracked the past decade.
So much so that trying to understand the current tensions at Manchester United is like being asked to provide a complete structural read-out of the causes of the Syldavian war of independence, a blur of factions, ancestral claims, popular dissent, moustachioed emperors in exile.
Everyone has a side here. Supporters against Glazers. Supporters against Ratcliffe. Glazers against Ratcliffe (dormant but watch this space). And beyond this an endless arm-wrestle of stadium fans against internet fans, MUFC plc legal dept against the planning authorities, dissident squad members versus incumbent manager, exiled loanees with a grudge, agents, hangers-on, parasites.
Step further out and you're into the drowned world of online fanaticism, Ronaldo loyalists, Ole ultras, Sheikh Jassim stock photo nostalgists, Nemanja Matic truthers, and every other strain of grudge and unscabbed wound. All of it soundtracked by the wailing Easter Island heads of the United legends punditry lineup, constantly reasserting their own relevance by saying things on podcasts, trotting out the Great Roy Keane Of History theory, a self-fuelling industry in themselves.
At the end of which those noises off are so persistent that the arrival of some people in sky blue shirts from down the road wanting an actual game of football almost feels like an interruption. Do you mind? There's an unceasing battle for local supremacy going on here.
But there are also some handy things about civil wars. First, not everyone can lose, or at least not at the same time. And this has so far been a good thing for Ruben Amorim. United's latest manager may have overseen an appalling run of form, driven by the obvious mismatch of evangelically stubborn tactics and an ill-tailored squad, but he is in effect bulletproof right now.
For a start he can lose himself in the fog of other people's failure. Nobody is actually ready to blame the last man in through the door for any of this. It may have been illogical to hire a tactical ideologue in mid-season, then ask him to fudge something up out of your existing bits and bobs. But this is hardly his fault. When someone comes through the door wearing a hat that says I really like wing-backs, there's a chance they might just really like wing-backs.
For now Amorim's greatest attribute is his easy, sleepy charisma, the ability to laugh and seem a little detached, the smile, jawline, wardrobe, the cinematic qualities. United in this state really don't need another hollow-eyed prisoner, another sad dad. They need a cool uncle. How long can that last?
The answer to this is of course: probably not much longer. The sense of a derby happening by default won't come again for Amorim. And there are at least three good reasons why this isn't actually a dead game.
First it's a chance to lob a grenade into City's season, which has now narrowed to the unlikely but still slightly jaw-dropping prospect of missing out on Champions League football next year.
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With this in mind it seems significant that Amorim's record against Pep Guardiola is relatively good. This may mean very little on Sunday. That record spans two different clubs and City teams in various states of convulsion. But there is also perhaps a tactical element.
Three years ago Amorim's Sporting Lisbon were thrashed 5-0 by City, having set up in a defensively pitched 5-3-2. In three meetings since Amorim has fielded a 3-4-3 with slightly more advanced flank players. This has coincided with a second leg 0-0 and victories this season by 4-1 and 2-1. City were in a swoon against Sporting in the first of these. The second was the Miracle of Amad. But there is perhaps evidence that shape is well tailored to finding spaces behind City's full-backs. Guardiola will clearly react to this. But making Guardiola react is also a note of honour.
This is the second thing Sunday offers, a chance to show some kind of actual progress beneath the results, because at some point Amorim will have to barter for his future. Right now there is only a vague sense of what a Ruben-shaped team might look like. United look better with Leny Yoro and Patrick Dorgu in the team. The loss at Nottingham Forest in midweek followed seven games without defeat.
If there is a positive underlying metric here it is that United have been at their best against the better teams. Some might suggest this is a function of the players dusting off their best efforts for the big day. There is perhaps a tactical element here too. Amorim's rigid shape is more effective as a reactive way of playing. When the shirt weighs you down like a Victorian diving suit it is a little easier to play if you don't have extra pressure to keep the ball, define the game, to be Manchester United in the abstract.
This is the final key note before Sunday. Everything United do now is basically prep for the only live element in their season, the Europa League and the possibility of a gateway back to the big stage. Winning the competition isn't impossible. It will require passage past Lyon, then two more rounds, with Athletic Bilbao, Eintracht Frankfurt and Lazio the stronger teams still in the draw.
It is hard to overstate the importance of this opportunity, not just to Amorim, but to the club generally. In the new Champions League format teams can make £80m just for reaching the quarter-finals. This is money this unstoppable cash-sluicing machine actually needs. The brand needs it, the brand which is, despite evidence to the contrary, far from indestructible.
For the age of Amorim this feels like a potential Mark Robins FA Cup moment, the thing that might still generate momentum, budget, a restraightening of the ship. Manchester United has always been a saga of collapse and rebuild, right back to the first big stadium rebuild after the Luftwaffe had bombed Old Trafford into the ground. The next few weeks are, if nothing else, an opportunity; one that starts on Sunday.