Man Utd have crushed careers since Sir Alex but Ruben Amorim can buck trend

Portuguese’s midas touch in the transfer market – epitomised by the Viktor Gyokeres deal – suggests United have, at long last, chosen wisely

Another four Viktor Gyokeres goals on Friday night and more for the highlight reels of this tall, elegant striker impatiently carving through retreating defences, and spanking free-kicks so hard that one suspects books fall from shelves in nearby houses. A whirlwind through Portugal’s Primeira Liga, with 66 goals in 63 games and 19 assists to underscore the point.
The story of Sporting’s trading under Ruben Amorim, as well as director of football Hugo Viana and the head of scouting Flavio Costa is one of staggering success – even by the standards of Portuguese football. Gyokeres feels like the crowning glory for the Lisbon club, because he was signed from Coventry City under the noses of the Premier League. An inspired acquisition by Sporting and not because he was cheap. He was the record transfer fee paid at a club that cannot afford expensive mistakes. They went all in, when they could easily have hedged bets elsewhere.
The full list of Sporting trades is bull’s-eye after bull’s-eye. Earned fees of €282.6 million (£237.4 million) according to Transfermarkt during the four years and seven months of the Amorim era alone. That encompasses the sale of Manuel Ugarte (€60 million), Pedro Porro (€40 million plus €5 million loan fee), Nuno Mendes (€38 million, plus €7 million), Joao Palhinha (€25 million), Abdul Fatawu (€17 million), and many more.
Gyokeres cost Sporting £20 million in a summer when many Premier League clubs were looking specifically for a new striker or, at the very least, attacking players. Manchester United committed £72 million on Rasmus Hojlund. Manchester City spent £53 million on Matheus Nunes. Even Everton spent £30 million on Beto.
First they sign your players, then they sign everyone else. Viana departs at the end of the season to City. Amorim does so to United at the end of next week. Meanwhile, Sporting have promoted Costa to chief scout. They will go off in search of the next rich seam of talent. Sporting have accomplished what everyone in football says they want to do – spot value in the market, build a successful team on the back of it, sell, and repeat.
What makes this interesting is how the latest great European success story translates to the Premier League. At City, can Viana sign the kinds of players that he traded in at Sporting? Will United, by virtue of their own wealth and status, continue to pay a premium for every player? Did Gyokeres need these 18 months demolishing the defences of Estrela da Amadora and Farense as well as, it should be said, Benfica, Porto and others across Europe? Was it a necessary tune-up before he potentially hits England’s top flight?
Amorim faces a different problem as the first head coach-styled manager at United. At Sporting, the clubs assemble young players seeking that life-changing contract, and the head coach tries to shape this portfolio of investments into a team with purpose. That Amorim has continued to do so through sale after sale is perhaps his most remarkable quality as a manager. He has pointed an ever-changing group of players towards the summit and they have followed him.
At United, the dynamic is different. This is the peak of the pay scale. There will be bigger contracts for the most successful players but few that offer proportionately such a giant leap as the one already secured. In short: you have already made it financially. Now the questions go to qualities more difficult to measure. Who of these players can battle his way to the top of the tiny fraction of the elite?
This is the essence of Amorim’s job now, and the task for which he has served such a demanding apprenticeship at Sporting. The club can afford no more expensive misadventures. United are hemmed in by their stretched profit and sustainability compliancy after the mistakes of previous years. There is not the room for trading that even Sporting enjoyed over recent years as the fees flowed in and the recruitment department went out in search of new young blood.
The wider picture is that United have crushed so many promising careers in the years that followed Sir Alex Ferguson. They tried to buy big names and also ventured into the emerging talent market, but both approaches presented problems. The executive changes made at United undoubtedly offer the new manager a better chance of success than his immediate predecessors, but these are very fine margins.
Equally, Amorim will have to manage those people as they try to manage him. Not everyone will survive in the brave new Ineos world as power and influence is earned and distributed.
As the new United head coach takes up his position, Gyokeres will no doubt continue to tear a path through the traumatised defences of Portugal. The drum will beat louder that here is United’s next great No 9 – and perhaps it really is as simple as that. An underrated player who slipped away unnoticed at Brighton of all places, the Championship’s second-highest goalscorer – step forward Chuba Akpom – of 2022-23. A star in waiting hiding in plain sight and now destined to follow his former coach.
Yet, what Amorim, Viana and Sporting have done so well in recent years has never been immediately obvious. It is that instinct which took them to Coventry and a player overlooked by the wealthiest football league in the world. United, by contrast, have done the obvious more often than not. For the most part they have paid the big money for the big names, and often watched in disbelief when it failed. Amorim’s short but spectacular career may teach them there is always an alternative.