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While Ruben Amorim was talking about staying but staring at the floor, Luke Shaw looked like he was going to let it all out. The left-back, who was inadvertently responsible for the Europa League final’s decisive own goal, seemed on the brink of tears. Sir Jim Ratcliffe was understood to be “heartbroken”. There was a “numbness” inside Manchester United.
After all the talk of what the Europa League meant to the club financially, you could now see the true emotional cost. United figures felt humiliated, fully aware this was going to be a fall-out like no other in football.
Amorim, for his part, didn’t want to do the supporters the disservice of defending the season; of going through the motions of insisting it will be better.
“It’s not my style, I cannot do it,” the United manager said. “In this moment, it is a little bit of faith.”
Except, amid all this emotion, any decisions may well come down to finance. Or, at least, numbers.
Shaw did offer a stirring defence of Amorim. “Ruben is 100 per cent the right person,” he said. “I think he knows what he needs to change.”
And, in normal circumstances, allowing full scope for this might well be the prudent course.
In normal circumstances, it’s possible the best thing United could do would be to double down and give this manager as much time and space as he needs.
Amorim’s record illustrates that there is clearly a bright coach there. He can obviously excel in the right circumstances.
It’s just that everything has now gone wrong. A dismal season now really has bottomed out. It has ended in a final defeat, that greatly damages the club’s medium-term future. A lack of European football is described as so damaging for their financial situation that they have to profoundly rethink their strategy.
Insiders talk of how “the deficit is not closing”. Even Amorim elaborated on “two plans for the market”. Some football industry figures were wondering whether United would even go through with the Matheus Cunha deal. A £60m-plus deal for such a player is now a huge gamble.
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This crisis goes way beyond this summer, though, and is much more severe than a question. It is an equation, one staring Ratcliffe in the face.
Amorim clearly needs a complete overhaul of this squad. Even Shaw spoke of how “all of us have to question ourselves tonight – are we good enough to be here?”
This helps explain one reason Amorim is at Old Trafford rather than, say, Anfield. Liverpool’s decision-makers thought he was a brilliant coach but felt they would likely have to spend hundreds of millions to give him the squad he needs for his ideology.
United now find themselves in exactly that situation, with the compounding problem that they have to sell an awful lot before they can buy. Everyone in the market knows it, too, making it trickier.
So, how much patience can they afford to show here? One obvious response is that the club has to finally get out of its usual cycle, but the problem is that they have put themselves in a situation where they don’t have the luxury of time. The last few months also show this can get worse.
United might fairly argue they were better than Spurs in the final, but it was still desperate. They had 73 per cent possession and created fewer opportunities than Bodo/Glimt. So much of the system is ill-fitting. They are considerably worse than the sum of their parts.
And that’s where you return to the equation of the need for the overhaul against the ability to carry it out.
Certainly, if Amorim stays, he needs to show much more adaptability than this. It took 70 minutes in Bilbao to even react. United have gone backwards, badly.
“Something has to change,” Shaw said.
There are deeper concerns, that are much less discussed but have been swirling around for some time.
Some United insiders first became worried in January, due to Amorim’s approach to rare breaks between games. Sources say he insisted on a training methodology of “five-day lead-ins to games”, with the four days immediately before the Arsenal FA Cup match involving strength training, endurance training, speed training and then “activation”. This stunned people for mid-season, especially in a football culture antithetical to that approach. It’s also an approach known by Uefa studies to increase injury risk and mental fatigue.
Amorim did it because it was successful for him in the Portuguese league, but that is a country where squads run less per game amid fewer mid-week matches, and there is such a wealth gap between the big three and the rest. There’s much more space for this.
That’s also why Bruno Fernandes’ recent comment, that Amorim was shocked by the intensity of Ipswich Town in his first match, was so unintentionally instructive.
This shock has only increased the struggle of imposing a tactical ideology that is untested in England, and only really exists in Portugal and Italy.
Executives within football believe Amorim can succeed, but that it would take that overhaul as well as three years to change the culture, United’s recruitment and his own training methodology.
That’s a big ask.
The club have backed themselves into a corner, all the more so due to Ratcliffe’s public comments. After some abrupt decisions at Old Trafford already, the United co-owner has spoken publicly about backing Amorim too much.
Rival executives have been surprised that he’s publicly talking about his coach at all. Daniel Levy generally isn’t given much credit these days, but look at the room he has given himself on Ange Postecoglou.
Part of this is also how he goes about the job. Ratcliffe has built a leadership hierarchy of impressive credentials, but that doesn’t mean they all fit well together, or that they have the specific experience for a crisis like this. This isn’t just a challenge. It’s the rebirth of a club.
One view among sporting directors is that the situation is becoming so traumatic that there are actually only certain solutions.
You have to really accept mediocrity for some time, and gradually build. You play young academy graduate with no fear, like Harry Amass, who also help to create a new connection with fans. Not players with the weight of expectation on their backs.
It’s why targets like Cunha and Liam Delap are actually surprising in themselves. For all Ratcliffe’s recent talk of football’s analytics evolution, these are obvious Premier League players. That also makes them expensive. There are multiple other options, that wouldn’t bring the same pressures.
If United are to spend, directors who have been in this situation say, they need to currently prioritise leadership over elite talent.
It is proper back to basics – but then where else do you go? United need so many solutions. Right now, they’re only looking at an equation.