Manchester United have found their man in the form of Ruben Amorim. The Sporting Lisbon coach has an impressive CV already at the age of just 39 but more importantly, best Pep’s Manchester City 4-1 in the Champions League in his final game. Adam Clery examines his distinct way of playing that's no doubt going to shake things up at Old Trafford...
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00:00Right, hello there everybody, Adam Cleary, 442, very sorry I'm late.
00:07About a million years ago now, Manchester United finally dispensed with the services
00:11of Eric Ten Hag.
00:12We did a video about why they had to do that and while everyone was speculating about whether
00:17it was going to be Rude or Xavi or Southgate or somebody like that, they basically went
00:23and appointed Ruben Amirim.
00:25Now as I say, I'm slightly late to the party on this one so I'm not going to give you his
00:29life story, you've almost certainly read it all already.
00:33Portuguese manager, very young, has a favoured system, done really good things at sporting
00:37and ha ha ha he has played for and against notable Manchester United players.
00:45Life is so short, you are never going to be this young again, do not let that be the kind
00:50of content you consume every single day.
00:52And speaking of which, his appointment does then invite some very interesting questions.
00:56Why are Manchester United a club who are trying to rebuild and do some really big things,
01:01so interested in him and what does his appointment mean for this football team?
01:06Let's have a look.
01:07Okay so, to start, one thing you have definitely heard a million times already is that Ruben
01:15Amirim has a very clearly defined set way of playing his 3-4-3 or 3-4-2-1, however you
01:23want to regard it, that's his baby.
01:26Now I would simply adore to give you some kind of contrary opinion on this, like actually
01:29I think you'll find during the Portuguese cup run, but no, this is the system he's played
01:34ever since he went into sporting and he has almost never ever changed it.
01:38But the reason he plays this system is like all top clubs that are expected to win the
01:44majority of their games, sporting, are looking to get in to a 3-2-5.
01:50Now this is of course very much the dominant formation du jour of the last couple of years,
01:56every major team across Europe that sees a lot of the ball and wins most of their matches,
02:01Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Madrid, all of them try and get into this sort of shape
02:07when they've got the ball.
02:08But the difference is that most of these big big teams do it with a back four.
02:13Like think about the first couple of times you ever saw this done, like when it was Manchester
02:17City, sorry Man United fans, that was Jon Stones or Akanji stepping in from the back
02:22line.
02:23And when it was Arsenal, sorry Manchester United fans, that was Oleksandr Zinchenko
02:27coming across from left back.
02:29And of course the reason all those teams were doing that was because while this was their
02:32attacking shape, they still wanted to defend in a 4-4-2 magic wand.
02:39And that meant it was really easy for whichever defender had moved into the middle to then
02:42step into the back line and now everybody's in a nice sort of natural comfortable position,
02:47they're compact, they're hard to break down.
02:49It is effortless.
02:51While the advantages of doing the 3-2-5 from the base of a back four are fairly obvious,
02:57there are very good reasons also why Amirim does not want to do that.
03:01Now the second reason is all to do with how they defend, so we'll get to that when I'm
03:04telling you about how they defend, but the first reason is purely pragmatism.
03:08By setting your team up this way, all it really changes to get into this clever attacking
03:13shape is that your wing backs push right on, which is something that all wing backs
03:17are expected to do.
03:18And that means that the actual profiles of the players in this shape are more or less
03:22exactly what you would expect.
03:24You've got three centre backs, they're all centre backs, you've got two midfielders,
03:28they're both midfielders, you've got two 10s, you can sort of have them be wide players
03:31or central players, but they know that role really well, and then a standard centre forward.
03:35There's nobody here with a really clever or unique profile.
03:39And that means, should be a lightbulb above my head, that at no stage are you, this team,
03:45overly vulnerable to losing one player.
03:48While Amirim has been at Sporting, they've had to sell Ugarte, they've had to sell Porro,
03:53they've had to sell Nunes, they've had to sell Mendes, and they've had to sell Pallinia.
03:56And while all of these players were absolutely massive for this team, you wouldn't describe
04:00any of them as like a particularly unique sort of player.
04:04Amirim has never been dependent on some sort of generational talent centre back who can
04:08step effortlessly into midfield, or a really sort of rare type of full back who can actually
04:13invert all the way into one of these number 10 positions and play there.
04:17He's just got exactly the kind of players you'd expect in exactly the positions they normally play.
04:23So when he loses one, you can go shopping very easily.
04:26And that's an incredibly smart thing to do when you're the manager of Sporting Lisbon,
04:29because you're a big, big club, you can attract some of the best players in the world, but
04:34you are constantly vulnerable to those players being pinched by bigger teams in bigger leagues.
04:41And the reason I mention all this is because it speaks to just how adaptable and how project-based Amirim is.
04:47Like two seasons ago, Sporting finished fourth after being really, really good the two or three seasons prior to that,
04:53and that was a terrible result for them.
04:54But that was the season where they lost Nuno Mendes, João Pallinia and Mateus Nunes in the summer.
05:00And then, after having Pedro Porro on loan for two years for Man City and finally getting the chains together
05:06to make that transfer permanent, Spurs went and pinched him in the January window.
05:10Like this side was decimated that season.
05:13But then, as is the brief when you're at this level, he took some of that money,
05:16nowhere near all, by the way, Sporting are in like a hundred million euros profit during his time at the club.
05:22And they went again, they brought in Victor Iocares, who's been amazing.
05:26Trincao came into the side, Schulman came into the side.
05:29They pretty much rebuilt it from scratch over the last two years and then went from fourth to another dominant championship win.
05:36Now, if you're a Man United fan and you're listening to that and you're thinking,
05:38okay, so he's got a system and he's got a style of play and he's excellent at coaching that into multiple players.
05:44Is that not a little bit narrow?
05:46And yes, actually, that's a good point.
05:50In an ideal world, you would want someone who had done this, but across multiple systems for multiple different teams.
05:57Only doing it once is a little bit of a cause for concern.
06:00But this, this Sporting team right now is the exact polar opposite of what Eric ten Haag managed to do at Man United.
06:08Like pundits were falling over themselves to come out with this exact same line during the last like year of his time there.
06:15Like what was their identity?
06:17What was their system?
06:18The things they were trying to do felt like they changed week on week.
06:22And when games got stretched and chaotic and all the systems start to break down,
06:26that's when these identities become really important because with everything else that's going on,
06:31players can go, okay, the game plan is out the window,
06:34but we know who we are and we know what to do and we know how to play and that can get you through.
06:39But in those situations, in those Man United games, they just completely collapsed because there was no identity.
06:46So let's talk about this identity.
06:49At the time of Manchester United coming calling, it was nine games for Sporting, nine wins, 30 goals scored and only two conceded.
06:59And that's immediately following on from a season where, as mentioned, not only did they win the league,
07:04they bantered everybody off with a 10 point winning margin.
07:08And they did it in this 3-4-2-1.
07:10This was sort of the most common 11, the most commonly used players.
07:13And what this is, is a flexible, dynamic attacking system,
07:18all geared around creating high quality scoring chances for a centre forward.
07:23And last season, this man, Victor Giocarez, whose name I am never sure I'm pronouncing correctly,
07:29scored exactly one million goals.
07:34Sorry, I'm being silly there. Let me check how many it actually was. Where are we?
07:3743. 43 goals for this Sporting team.
07:41And the only player in the squad who was anywhere near that was Paulinho,
07:46who was his understudy in the same position. He got 21.
07:49So that's, all in all, quick maths, 64 goals created for the player in this position.
07:56Wow-wow-wee-wow.
07:58But for the big, terrible, awful nerds like me, it's these four players that are the most interesting.
08:03Because ostensibly, you have two sixes and two tens, and that should be quite predictable and unexciting.
08:09But what I, personally, me, really like about Amirim is that even when he's got multiple players in the same position,
08:15he tries his best to make sure their profiles are very different.
08:19Like, in the two number sixes here, one of them is always instructed to try and join the attack wherever he can,
08:25play really vertically up and down the pitch.
08:28And the other is big, bastard, ball winner.
08:31Like, this was them last season, but previously, in this exact role, they've had João Paulinho and Mateus Nunes.
08:37And if you've watched any Premier League, you will know how different those two are in that position.
08:42It's a great combination.
08:43And then with the two in front, you do more or less the same thing again.
08:46One of them tends to be a classic number 10 who wants to support the striker, play centrally, but is capable of drifting out wide.
08:52And the other tends to be an inverted winger whose instincts are to be a little wider,
08:57but is really good at coming into these areas and creating chances and going for goal.
09:01Again, same position, very different players.
09:03And the same is even true with the wingbacks.
09:06One of them tends to be instructed to get right the way to the byline,
09:09to put crosses in for players to attack from these areas,
09:12while the other tends to sort of sit in the channel, sit a little deeper,
09:15allows for overlaps from the other 10, can play sort of similar balls to the number 10 on this side.
09:22They've got lots of different options from very similar players.
09:26Why did I do that?
09:27And how that plays out in games of football is that Sporting want to move the ball from the back to the front
09:33as quickly and directly as possible without usually humping it long.
09:38And from this 3-4-2-1, they are capable of morphing into sort of like a 3-4-2-2,
09:44because the different profiles of the players they've got,
09:46they've got the 10 who want to support the centre forward, so he goes into there.
09:49They've got the 6 who want to move forward, he goes in with the other 10.
09:54And a centre-back then steps forward into midfield.
09:56And the goalkeeper, hello Andre Onana, just steps into the back line and plays there.
10:02And this gives them absolutely loads of passing angles they can use to move the ball up the pitch
10:06into these two as quickly as they possibly can.
10:09And once they do get the ball into this area with the support from the wing-backs,
10:14it becomes not about passing, but about carrying.
10:17The objective, almost always, is to get the ball somewhere into this line,
10:21and then these four players carry it into the final third.
10:25And if you go and look at all the numbers from the Portuguese league last season,
10:28you can see the evidence of this.
10:30Sporting had the lowest number of attempted long balls in the league,
10:34and the second lowest number of switches of play.
10:37They just don't like doing it full stop.
10:39They also had the combined lowest number of touches in both their own penalty area
10:44and the defensive third.
10:45They don't just knock it about for the sake of it, it goes forward as quickly as possible.
10:49And then they had the highest number of touches in the middle third of the pitch.
10:53But crucially, and I promise this is not just descending into some pointless stats thing,
10:57I am going somewhere with this.
10:59Okay, they scored the most goals in the league out of any team,
11:01like nearly 20 more than I think it was Benfica who was second.
11:05And add to that, as you might expect, while lowest number of touches in this part of the pitch,
11:09highest number of touches in the middle third of the pitch.
11:12But here's where you can start to paint the picture of that identity, right?
11:15They did not have the highest number of touches in the final third.
11:19They were like fourth in the league for that,
11:21and they did not have the most number of shots either.
11:24They were third or fourth for that.
11:26And that is because while all the other good teams in Portugal,
11:29like Porto, Benfica, Braga, all of them,
11:31are creating chances a more traditional way,
11:33passing it through the final third, using their quality,
11:36Sporting have that identity.
11:38Once it gets into the middle third, it's not about creating chances the old-fashioned way.
11:43They run it.
11:44They carry it.
11:46They get into the box and create a smaller number of better chances.
11:51Like scoring the most goals by a country mile while having loads less shots sounds weird,
11:56they have by a distance the highest number of progressive carries into the opposition box.
12:02And if you can carry the ball into the box,
12:04the chance you then create from that is usually excellent.
12:08And again, with apologies to Manchester United fans,
12:10think about those really early days of Pep before he became a supervillain.
12:14How many Manchester City goals did you see by a player running into this half space in the box
12:21and then cutting it back to the second penalty area?
12:24That is, in football, the best chance you can create, according to nerds.
12:29And if we roll the footage from Victor Guillorquez's goals from last season,
12:36you lose count of how many are one of these four players
12:40either getting to the byline or getting into the box and cutting it a cross goal
12:44for him to finish first time.
12:46Like this is one of them right here.
12:48And here is another one.
12:51And here is another one.
12:53And here is another one.
12:55Here is another one.
12:57And they are all just from last season.
13:00And this fundamentally is what sporting's identity is all about.
13:03You move it up the field as quickly as possible so the opposition can't get deep,
13:08can't get into a low block, can't properly set.
13:10And when you're in the middle, one of these four players then runs into the space that leaves you
13:15and creates a chance for a centre forward where 80% of the work has already been done.
13:21And again, go back to those stats.
13:23They were fourth in the league.
13:24They were miles behind for the number of passes into the penalty area.
13:29But coincidentally, they had the lowest average shot distance
13:33because they're not playing the ball into that area.
13:36They are running into it and cutting it back to here.
13:39Now this is going to sound like a really, really small thing,
13:41but just trust me on this.
13:42This is impressive, right?
13:43Across the course of a season, an average shot distance for most teams
13:47is somewhere between 18 and 20 yards, which means it's outside the box.
13:51Last season in the league, Sporting's average shot distance, 15 yards.
13:57And that might sound like, oh, it's only three or like five yards less than that.
14:00But trust me, in the penalty area, the difference between those two things is absolutely huge.
14:06And what's great for Manchester United is they went out last season
14:09and they bought Rasmus Hoyland, who was the absolute perfect archetypal
14:14just get on the end of it, centre forward.
14:16And then they hardly ever created those kind of chances for him.
14:19I remember this one from last season's Champions League
14:22where Scott McTominay gets to the byline and pulls it back.
14:24And I never, ever saw them do that again.
14:26But the weird thing is, this is where the stats can start to get slightly misleading
14:31for Sporting, because the way I'm describing them here,
14:33how they play, sounds a lot like, say, a Liverpool, for example.
14:37Sorry, Manchester United fans.
14:38Clops, Liverpool, fast, fast, fast, forward, forward, forward.
14:41Don't worry about keeping the ball too much.
14:42Just get it into the danger areas.
14:44But then you go and look at their average possession numbers
14:47and it makes them look like a really slow, really ponderous team.
14:50Like they hang on to the ball for absolutely ages.
14:53They have loads of really sort of long passing sequences.
14:56So which is it?
14:58Well, it's the first one.
14:59It's absolutely the first one.
15:01They play fast, really direct attacking football.
15:03But those numbers come out as really inflated
15:06because they're also very good at retaining possession.
15:09What Amirim has clearly worked on over the last couple of years with Sporting
15:12is this idea that, yes, we know how to create these chances,
15:16but we don't force it at the same time.
15:18Like quite often you'll see Sporting get in or get on top
15:21and the pass just isn't there.
15:23So they'll work it more or less all the way back to the start and start over.
15:27Like I've seen them do this a couple of times,
15:29but they'll get in, they'll be fully in,
15:30they'll be at the byline and the ball just won't be on.
15:34So it ends up going back to the midfielder,
15:35goes back to the midfielders,
15:37goes all the way back to the defenders
15:38and then they just have another go.
15:40The object is to then bring the team out of their low block
15:44because that's how they get in behind.
15:45Now that all sounds wonderful and fairies and rainbows
15:49and Werther's Originals and all that lovely stuff, right?
15:51But I did say there was another reason
15:54why he likes to play this 3-4-2-1
15:56when almost every other coach in Europe
15:58who's trying to do a similar thing wants a back four.
16:01So the other main advantage of this system
16:03is that when you are defending,
16:05you can also very easily get into a particular shape you want.
16:08And that shape for Amirim, centre backs go nice and narrow,
16:12the wing backs drop all the way back into normal full back areas,
16:15the 10s sort of take these half spaces
16:17and you defend not in a 4-4-2, but in a 5-4-1.
16:22Now this is an unfortunate necessity of wanting to do that 3-2-5
16:26with players who are more or less already in the right position
16:29because if you wanted to do a 4-4-2, then how does that work?
16:33Now, presumably the other player up front
16:35will be your more attacking 10,
16:36but then how do we reorganise this?
16:39Presumably one of the wing backs comes
16:40and sort of defends the wide space and the defence shuffles across.
16:44But now you've got a weird profile mix
16:47because at left back, you have a centre back
16:49and at right back, you have a wing back.
16:51And I mean, obviously that's not the end of the world.
16:52It's definitely something you can coach,
16:54but it goes against that whole thing Amirim is trying to avoid
16:57because now you need to own a centre back who can play left back.
17:01You need to own a number 10
17:02who's equally comfortable as a pressing forward.
17:04You need to own a wing back
17:05who's not afraid to come a little bit narrower
17:07if the game gets really congested.
17:09And that's what he's trying to avoid.
17:11He wants players in more natural positions.
17:13Ergo, the most natural thing to have then is a back five.
17:18But of course, that is very, very defensive.
17:22And so what tends to be sporting as Achilles' heel
17:24is if you get a team that's got two very ambitious wide attackers,
17:27you can pin those wing backs all the way back there.
17:29There's only one player putting any pressure on the defence,
17:33so they tend to get played around really easily.
17:35And then you just drop as many players as you can
17:38in this gap between the defence and the midfield.
17:41And this is causing a problem on a couple of occasions,
17:43especially against the bigger teams,
17:45because either they're capable of dragging them away from the goal
17:47and running into the space behind,
17:49or they press up against them, somebody drops,
17:51and then somebody gets into that space.
17:53It's not something Amirim's been able to overcome
17:56because of how he wants this team to be assembled.
17:59And honestly, the only reason I even mention this
18:01is because I think it's going to be interesting to watch out for
18:03in those first couple of games.
18:05The 3-4-2-1 is so lesser spotted across the biggest teams in Europe
18:10because, while it does give you the right attacking shape,
18:12it causes this problem defensively.
18:15Now, Amirim does not have to defend with a back five,
18:18even if he plays with a back three.
18:21So it's going to be really interesting to see whether he's like,
18:23ah, do you know what? I'm at Man United now.
18:25I can have whatever players I want, really.
18:27I'll do something that's a lot more solid.
18:29Or whether he believes in this so much,
18:31he's going to try and coach it in.
18:33Now, I know the next question on your lips is like,
18:35but what does this mean for the current players?
18:37How easy is this going to be to implement?
18:39And I'm going to do, I promise you, I promise you,
18:42before he starts a job, I'm going to do a separate video on that
18:44because I've seen all the other videos everyone else has done
18:47and I keep finding myself agreeing with some of it
18:49and disagreeing with others.
18:51Like, everyone's like, oh, this is going to be great for Ugarte
18:54because he's played him before.
18:55I'm not so sure that it is.
18:58I think it's great news for Hoyland.
18:59I think it'll create the kind of chances he absolutely loves.
19:01I think it's great for Onana
19:02because he does want his goalkeeper to get on the ball quite a lot.
19:05But the problem positions, clearly,
19:07is he going to get more out of Bruno Fernandes
19:09playing him as one of these 10s
19:10or one of these more sort of disciplined sitting number sixes?
19:13And who, Que Merda, is going to play wingback?
19:17And, spoiler alert for that video,
19:19but I may be copywriting the name the Antoniassons.
19:25Does that work?
19:25But yes, that is, that's it for now.
19:27Ruben Amirim.
19:29Do I think he's the right man for Manchester United?
19:32And is he going to do a good job?
19:35That remains to be seen, but he's certainly a man
19:37and he probably can't do any worse.
19:39Now, of course, if you are a Manchester United supporter,
19:41I would dearly love to sort of take your emotional pulse on this one
19:45because I'd personally be really, really excited,
19:47but I can understand why there might be some trepidation.
19:50So thoughts, feelings, poetry, verse, lyric,
19:52the song of your heart, please, in the comments down below.
19:55And if you think you're too good for that,
19:56you can get me on all the socials at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y.
19:59Ooh, look, the 442 socials are in the corner of the video.
20:02Standard Housekeeping, the 30th anniversary edition of the magazine,
20:05is still on sale.
20:06It's one of the best things we've ever done, in my opinion,
20:09not just while I've been here, but over the entire 30 years.
20:12We're all really buzzing with it,
20:13so you should treat yourself and check that out.
20:15And also, the 30th anniversary shirt, when I unfold it correctly,
20:20I think there are possibly a few still available,
20:23but I am recording this early in the week
20:25and I'm not sure when it's going to go out, so no promises.
20:27And yeah, that's it.
20:30That's absolutely everything I had for you.
20:33Please go and enjoy your day,
20:34or preferably watch another 442 video
20:37and then go enjoy your day, or watch another 442.
20:40You get the idea.
20:41Goodbye.