Los antecedentes del portugués. - The background of Portuguese
Rúben Amorim began to make noise in Portugal in relatively new times, the Portuguese barely achieved his first success as a coach in 2020, winning the Portuguese Taca da Liga with SC Braga in 2020, a surprise if we consider that Portugal is largely dominated by two usual giants, FC Porto and Benfica SL, however, we all know the third in dispute for the Portuguese throne, Sporting Lisbon, a club that has given birth to the nation's great names. European, such as, for example, Cristiano Ronaldo, the Lisbon team had already had some seasons in the shadow of the Portuguese giants, a drought of league titles of almost 20 years already had the fans extremely angry with the board, which could not give return to the situation, beyond the occasional season where the club seemed to show signs of improvement. It was then that the board turned to see the revelation coach in Portugal, Rúben Amorim and his spectacular football, very high pressure and tactical flexibility, then, they made the decision, they took Amorim out of the Braga ranks and took him to Lisbon, in search of an unexpected reaction from the team led by the almost inexperienced technician.
Luckily for the managers, this risky bet worked, they went All In with Rúben and took the biggest pot, not only did they break Sporting's league drought, but they also managed to win a second league in what was their last season. in charge of the Lisbon team, and it is precisely in the current season that we are experiencing, that the name of Rúben Amorim and his Sporting came to light, accompanied of course by the media coverage of one of its greatest figures, the forward Swedish Viktor Gyokeres. His Sporting was the leader of Portugal with an astonishing total of 12 victories in 12 games that placed it in first position, marking one of the best starts in the history of Portuguese league tournaments, along with this, the team remained among the first 8 classified in the table of the first phase of the Champions League, when of course, seeing themselves surpassed by more than half of the teams in the tournament, their strongest expectations were to qualify for the round of play-off, so much was Rúben's impact upon his arrival that his departure has impacted the team in the same way. Joao Pereira, Amorim's successor, has already starred in the club's first two defeats in the League against obviously inferior teams, while that in the Champions League after having beaten Manchester City 4-1, they were defeated by Arsenal in Portugal and failed to score a point during their visit to Bruges in Brussels.
¿Qué ha cambiado en Manchester? - What has changed in Manchester?
From the beginning Amorim established its line of 3 centre-backs, using Diogo Dalot and Diallo as the flankers and establishing a double five with the Danish Eriksen and the Brazilian Casemiro, Garnacho and Bruno Fernandes came out behind Marcus Rashford who scored the only goal of a a draw with a bitter taste against Ipswich, one of the worst teams in the Premier League, as the games went by, the formation and the idea of the game have remained faithful to what Amorim wants, but what has changed, of course, are the protagonists in charge of developing the Portuguese coach's football, at least Eriksen and Casemiro have been surpassed by Ugarte and Mainoo as Amorim's favorites, while Hojlund has displaced the Englishman Rashford, who is one of the oldest footballers of the Manchester club. In the line of 3, Lisandro, Maguire, de Ligt and Yoro are competing for the starting positions, even appearing in the middle of the games for some of their teammates, while on the wingers, Mazraoui has recovered ground, for his part Diogo Dalot is one of the most permanent Portuguese footballers (it should be noted that they are compatriots)
Players like Joshua Zirkzee, Victor Lindelof, Mason Mount and Antony have seen minutes during Amorim's process, so it is still too late to say that he has already found his 11, but against Manchester City, these footballers saw minutes above the With Eriksen and Casemiro already relegated, even Bruno Fernandés began to fulfill the role of his Danish teammate, Amorim preferring to take a risk in this way before giving the experienced midfielder the opportunity.
¿Brillará el futuro de Manchester? - Will Manchester's future shine?
Amorim's idea of football is attractive, it is quite reminiscent of Simone Inzaghi's Inter or the teams that Antonio Conte usually puts together, however, we already saw the story of a new coach with high expectations with the Dutchman Erik Ten Hag, who had just converted his Ajax in a total steamroller in the Netherlands and which collided head-on with the harsh reality of Manchester United, a situation which he was never able to turn around and did not even manage to come close to the progress made by the one who, after Ferguson's departure, has been his "best" successor (so to speak), José Mourinho. The truth is that Manchester United is thirteenth in the Premier League and observes how another English giant that seemed not to emerge from the crisis like Chelsea, has found its great savior in Enzo Maresca. Can the fans of the Red Devils wait? the same from Portuguese? We don't know, we can't predict the future, much less in a team with as much turbulence as Manchester United, but we must not forget that we are talking about one of the two biggest clubs in England along with Liverpool and that can never discarding this type of giants in the big events (he already demonstrated this by further aggravating the situation of his staunch rival, Manchester City)
What I could assure, at least with what has been shown so far, is that change is coming, for better or worse, Amorim is not afraid to seat figures already established in world football such as Casemiro or Rashford himself for whom he considers They can better deploy the football that it proposes, the same football that teams that have had success in recent years, such as Gasperini's Atalanta, Xabi Alonso's Leverkusen or Inzaghi's Inter, this school emerging under this philosophy of high pressure and intense play may be the metamorphosis of Heavy Metal that Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool showed during their best years, Pep Guardiola's static and absolute dominance football seems to have lost effectiveness and does not have the ability to adapt to the new fields that are being proposed, Italian coaches are being the spearhead of this revolution to which I am sure many more clubs will end up joining. The important thing for Manchester now is that it is calm in the Europa League, its figures feel comfortable with the Portuguese coach and after the initial setbacks they have managed to get two good results, against Viktoria Plzen and Manchester City, tomorrow they face a tough rival, like Australian Postecoglou's Tottenham is and we can say that it would be a good time to set a trend in the current season.