LONDON, United Kingdom, Jan 5 – Ruben Amorim’s toxic and unceremonious exit from Manchester United is yet another undignified chapter in the Old Trafford tenure of Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos.
Amorim left United’s hierarchy with no option but to sack him after Sunday’s Elland Road outburst, an ill-judged play from a combustible personality who was already on shifting sands.
It was directly aimed at those above him, a high-risk strategy that became the final blow in a battle Amorim was never going to win.
The cracks were wide and relationships fracturing as he spoke. Amorim’s fighting talk after the 1-1 draw at Leeds United was simply the final act in the drama.
It is the latest very public example of how Ratcliffe and his cohorts have failed to grapple successfully with the giant, unwieldy beast that is Manchester United since he bought a 27.7% stake and started running football affairs in February 2024.
Billionaire Ratcliffe, like so many other hugely successful businessmen, has discovered operating a football club – especially one on the scale of Manchester United – is a different world to the one he had previously occupied.
United are no less dysfunctional now than they were on the day Ratcliffe walked in, then portrayed as the mega-rich saviour destined to clear the clouds of ill-feeling hanging over the club under the ownership of the Glazers.
The reality has proved different.
Put brutally, Ratcliffe and those working with him have got very little right, stumbling from one poor decision to another, leading to the dismissal of the 40-year-old Portuguese only 14 months after triggering a £9.25m release clause from his previous club Sporting of Lisbon.
