Manchester United have parted ways with head coach Ruben Amorim after just 14 tumultuous months at Old Trafford. While a public power struggle with the club’s hierarchy over transfers and tactics proved to be the final straw, Amorim’s tenure was equally undone by a series of damaging fallouts with key players.

The Portuguese coach, who once stated “not even the pope” could make him abandon his tactical principles, leaves with the worst win record of any United manager since the 1970s, having alienated a significant portion of his squad in the process.

Amorim’s dismissal came less than 24 hours after a stunning post-match press conference following a 1-1 draw with Leeds United. In those fateful remarks, he drew a clear line between being a “manager” and a mere “coach,” publicly challenging Sporting Director Jason Wilcox and the recruitment department to “do their job”.

The club’s leadership, led by Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Omar Berrada, acted swiftly, determining there was no way back from such a public breach of trust. While the immediate cause was this outburst, the roots of his downfall ran much deeper, stretching back to his often-contentious relationships with the players he was tasked with leading.

Amorim’s man-management style, often described as rigid and unyielding, led to significant friction with several high-profile and academy talents. These conflicts eroded his standing within the dressing room and, crucially, with a club hierarchy that values its homegrown pathway.

1. Marcus Rashford

Amorim’s handling of Marcus Rashford was one of the most controversial episodes of his reign. The England international was effectively frozen out, placed in a so-called ‘bomb squad’ of unwanted players before being sold.

The decision has since backfired spectactularly, with Rashford rebuilding his career first at Aston Villa and now at Barcelona, earning a recall to the national team in the process. Amorim’s criticism was reportedly extreme; he once claimed he would rather field his 60-year-old goalkeeping coach, Jorge Vital, than play Rashford, a comment that shocked the squad.

2. Alejandro Garnacho

Like Rashford, Argentine winger Alejandro Garnacho was deemed surplus to requirements. The falling out culminated in Garnacho being left out of the squad for the final game of last season after reacting furiously to being benched for the Europa League final.

He was subsequently sold to Chelsea for £40 million.

Garnacho’s feelings about his former coach were made abundantly clear this week when he ‘liked’ a social media post announcing Amorim’s sacking.

3. Kobbie Mainoo

Amorim’s perceived disregard for the club’s academy was a major point of contention with both fans and the board. The most glaring example was his treatment of midfielder Kobbie Mainoo.

Despite Mainoo’s emergence as a promising talent, Amorim persistently overlooked him in favor of his own tactical preferences. This decision drew criticism from club legends and symbolized a broader failure to embrace a core United tradition, which INEOS identified as a significant “red flag”.

4. Patrick Dorgu

In a surprising twist, even players Amorim reportedly pushed to sign became targets of his criticism. Defender Patrick Dorgu, a signing made early in his tenure, was publicly singled out.

Amorim stated that “you can feel the anxiety” whenever the Danish international received the ball, a harsh assessment that did not sit well with the club’s leadership. It was a sign of a coach whose frustrations were boiling over in a damaging, public manner.

5. & 6. Harry Amass and Chido Obi

The friction extended to the next generation. Amorim made “less than complimentary comments” about young prospects Harry Amass and Chido Obi, which sources say “struck a nerve” with the United hierarchy. He was believed to be unhappy with what he perceived as a culture of “entitlement” within the academy.

This criticism of promising youth players was viewed as a step too far for a club that prides itself on its developmental ethos, further isolating Amorim from the club’s cultural foundations.

The discontent was not limited to individual cases. Veteran midfielder Christian Eriksen recently revealed how demoralizing the environment became, referencing Amorim’s comment that he was coaching “maybe the worst team in the history of Manchester United”. “I don’t think that helped the players at all,” Eriksen said. “Some stuff you can say inside and it’s not too clever to say outside, to put extra pressure… I think for us it was a bit of like, ‘Oh, here we go again. Another headline'”.

This toxic atmosphere was compounded by Amorim’s dogmatic commitment to a 3-4-2-1 formation, a system many players struggled to adapt to. Despite discussions with Jason Wilcox about being more flexible, Amorim repeatedly reverted to his preferred setup, most recently in disappointing draws against Wolves and Leeds.

As pundit Jamie Carragher scathingly noted, “He’s not good enough to be Manchester United’s manager… He’s barely competent enough to be a Premier League manager right now”.