Manchester United did not include Ruben Amorim on their first shortlist when the club began seeking a replacement for former manager Erik ten Hag, a report in The Athletic has claimed. That initial list favoured candidates with proven Premier League experience and featured Thomas Tuchel, Mauricio Pochettino, Roberto De Zerbi, Thomas Frank, Marco Silva and Graham Potter.<\/p>\n
Sources close to the process identified Tuchel and De Zerbi as early favourites. De Zerbi at one stage appeared to be the preferred external option before United decided to keep Ten Hag in charge and offer him a new contract. Amorim\u2019s name, however, continued to surface in informal conversations over the summer with agents and several figures around the club as part of wider advice-gathering.<\/p>\n
Informal contact was made with Amorim and the then-Sporting CP boss impressed those involved. Despite that, United\u2019s hierarchy were concerned that appointing a coach without Premier League experience represented an unnecessary risk while the club underwent significant internal change. As a result, the idea of signing Amorim was shelved at that time.<\/p>\n
The situation changed after Ten Hag was sacked in October 2024. Club officials reopened discussions and there was agreement that the Portuguese tactician should be pursued. United accepted the obvious risk of hiring a manager without Premier League experience but judged that a mid-season appointment would allow Amorim to use the second half of the 2024\u201325 campaign to build that experience.<\/p>\n
Amorim\u2019s early period in the job has been difficult. He has admitted his first six months at the helm were filled with disappointment and chaos, so much so that he actually considered quitting the club in the aftermath of defeat in the Europa League final. The sequence underlines how the club\u2019s recruitment thinking shifted from prioritising Premier League experience to embracing a longer-term view when the vacancy reappeared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Amorim was not on United’s initial shortlist but was later pursued after Ten Hag’s October sacking..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4218,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1083,1163],"tags":[983,1021,1087],"class_list":["post-4219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-utd","category-transfers","tag-agents","tag-amorim","tag-coaching-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}