Manchester United hired Ruben Amorim on Friday, taking a chance on a young coach who hasn’t proven himself in Europe’s top leagues to help improve the struggling English team.
At just 39 years old, Amorim comes from Portuguese champion Sporting Lisbon and will be the youngest manager at United since the 1960s. He is the sixth permanent manager since Alex Ferguson retired in 2013.
Amorim will officially start on November 11 after finishing his duties at Sporting and has signed a contract that runs until June 2027, with an option for another year.
“Ruben is one of the most exciting and highly rated young coaches in European football,” United stated.
The club, which has won the Premier League 20 times, hasn’t taken the title since Ferguson’s last season. Amorim’s challenge is to bring back the glory days for a team that has struggled to keep up with the top clubs in England and Europe.
Previous managers like Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho, and most recently Erik ten Hag, who was let go on Monday, have not been able to do this.
Currently, United sits in 14th place in the 20-team Premier League, having lost four out of its first nine games.
Amorim, a former midfielder for Portugal who played most of his career at Benfica, is joining United after they paid 11 million euros ($12 million) to release him from his contract at Sporting, where he won two Portuguese titles in four seasons.
Sporting also announced that they would receive an additional 1.66 million euros ($1.8 million) due to contractual agreements and commissions.
Amorim has only managed teams in Portugal and lacks experience with some of the top players under the intense spotlight of global media.
“He comes from a big club in Portugal,” said United defender Diogo Dalot on Sky Sports, “but I always say it almost quadruples the amount of intensity, the amount of pressure (at United).”
Amorim ended Sporting’s 19-year wait for a league title in 2021, breaking the dominance of rivals Benfica and Porto. He also won the League Cup that same year during his first season.
Sporting won the league again last season and has won all nine of its league matches so far this season, enhancing Amorim’s reputation as a rising coaching talent. In his only other top job at Braga, he won the League Cup in less than a season.
Amorim will wrap up his time at Sporting with a match against Estrela da Amadora on Friday, followed by a Champions League game at home against Manchester City on Tuesday, and then a trip to Braga on November 10.
In the meantime, Ruud van Nistelrooy will continue as the interim manager of United, overseeing three home games before the international break: against Chelsea and Leicester in the Premier League, with a Europa League match against PAOK in between.
Amorim’s first match with United will be away against Ipswich on November 24.
He reportedly talked to West Ham last season before they chose Julen Lopetegui as their coach, and he was also mentioned as a possible replacement for Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool before Arne Slot was hired.
Now, he is taking the lead at one of the most famous clubs in the world, which has been struggling for the past ten years and is going through changes with a new soccer-focused leadership team led by British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe.
Ratcliffe will hope he has found a promising new coach in Amorim, who is the youngest United manager since Wilf McGuinness, who was 31 when he took over in 1969.
Following the hiring of Erik ten Hag, who came from the Dutch league, this shows United’s shift away from bringing in well-known coaches like Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho.
The Premier League now features four managers in their 30s, with Amorim joining Brighton’s Fabian Hurzeler (31), Ipswich’s Kieran McKenna (38), and Southampton’s Russell Martin (38).
