Manchester United officials met Ruben Amorim for the first time in person in Seville, southern Spain, in late October, after Sporting had beaten Portimonense away in the Algarve in a cup match on October 18. Omar Berrada, Dan Ashworth and Jason Wilcox flew out in a private plane from Manchester.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Dave Brailsford also went to Andalusia by private plane and arrived later. Amorim and his agent made the two-hour drive from Portimao for the meeting, held at a private house.
Those talks lasted for five hours. Amorim explained in detail his football vision. He was clear he saw the game being played with a back three, but that there was a degree of flexibility to his philosophy and that he would evolve at the right times. He said it was important to have tactically versatile players who could play in multiple systems.
The main difference with the one he preferred was that it used wing-backs rather than wingers, but it was felt that overall it was not so far from what Arsenal and Manchester City were doing, with the latter having also tweaked their style to finally win the Champions League in 2023 by playing a four-man defence comprised entirely of centre-backs.
Amorim was precise and clear as he explained his ideas. Everyone was impressed with his charisma, emotional and tactical intelligence, plus the way he said he communicated with players, young and established, and the methods he used, including utilising video. United saw him as someone who could go through a full project, taking three to four years, but the timing was not optimal. Several times, Amorim asked: “Why now? Why not at the end of the season?”
There were times last season when an emotional Amorim, watching his United team lose game after game, said publicly he had wanted to wait and come to England at the end of that campaign, but he can fully see how joining the club a year ago instead is now of benefit.
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