IT was wonderful to see the adulation and warmth towards Ruben Amorim as he bid farewell in his final home game as Sporting Lisbon manager.
And yet despite that stunning 4-1 win over Manchester City, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.
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At Sporting he has achieved incredible success with two Portuguese Primeira Liga crowns — the first of which ended a 19-year title drought.
Understandably he is adored by the fans, even when they knew he was leaving and there is a clear bond between him and the players. He looked a man genuinely content and happy with his life in Lisbon.
“Don’t do it Ruben, stay where you are” . . . but it was too late.
Amorim had already opted to throw himself into the managerial meat grinder known as the modern-day Manchester United.
He only has to look at the disgraceful treatment of his immediate predecessor to know what he is going into.
There was something very unsavoury about the way Amorim was being welcomed to United with all those club social media postings.
It was as if he had arrived as a great liberator to take the club into the light after a dark time.
Erik ten Hag was a good man. One of the best I have met in my 25 years covering the Red Devils.
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He did everything he could to drag that club back up, winning two trophies and getting to another final along the way in his two full seasons.
Yet it was clear the new broom being swept through Old Trafford by part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe was going to take the Dutchman along with it.
Even after that so-called show of faith in him over the summer, after everyone else they tried to get to do the job ran a mile.
He was always staring at the exit door at a time when 250 staff have brutally been made redundant, against a back drop of cuts that is gradually ripping away a bit more of the soul of this great club.
No matter how good he is the squad is poor, for which Ten Hag has to take a major part of the responsibility. Although he never wanted Joshua Zirkzee, an Ineos signing, and we can see why.
If Amorim can get a tune out of this lot, then he will be the Ludwig van Beethoven of football.
All the while he will have to cope with everything that comes with being United boss.
A club that stopped being able to match expectations the moment Sir Alex Ferguson left in 2013.
Amorim is the sixth permanent boss since then. They all arrive with a smile and believe they can be “the one”.
They all leave with their reputations in the dustbin and their lives changed.
Ten Hag is still coming to terms with what happened. I’m not sure if David Moyes ever will.
Even baby-faced assassin Ole Gunnar Solskjaer looked his age by the end.
Sometimes, if you find contentment in your life — and a job you love with people around you who love you — that’s when you have really reached the pinnacle.
Amorim had that. And in two years’ time my bet is he wishes he never turned his back on it.
Littler’s a star I CAN relate to
IT’S often difficult to relate to the incredible feats of sportsmen and women.
That is what fascinates us the most: How on earth do they do that?
Then you learn of the sacrifices they make for years and years for that one moment in time.
How they even struggle to let themselves go after all the hard work when they retire.
Then you hear about Luke Littler.
He has just become darts’ youngest millionaire at 17 and whose mid-match routine was revealed by Martin Lukeman, whom he thumped 16-3 in the Grand Slam of Darts final.
“He had a curry, a Boost [chocolate bar], a meal deal and them little sweets, half pink and half white . . . Squashies. Then he walks up there and just smashes me like that.”
Marvellous.
Jimmy is living the dry life
THE MODERN snooker player is a world away from those icons we used to enjoy watching in the 80s and early 90s.
Gym, water, diet, sleep. The best, Ronnie O’Sullivan, is a great example of this with his running.
Which reminded me of how Jimmy White used to enjoy his downtime.
At his height White once went to the Gresham Hotel in Dublin for a weekend and returned six weeks later.
He had 24 bottles of Dom Perignon champagne sent to his room daily and was reportedly joined by “nightclub girls, UB40 and Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy” for what was described as “the mother of all benders”.
When Alex Higgins rocked up to join in, it’s fair to say things went up a notch.
Yet in the weekend just gone, the now clean-living “Whirlwind”, aged 62, beat an opponent 42 years his junior in the qualifiers for the UK Champs — over four decades after reaching the semis on his debut.
Sober, fit and healthy White is still competing. He may never have been a world champion, but he remains a champion of the sport.
Europe crown not for Nick-ing
HATS off, or rather caps and visors, to Rory McIlroy.
His brilliant finish to claim the DP World Tour Championship meant he blitzed the field in the Race to Dubai for a sixth time.
That equalled Seve Ballesteros’ achievement and leaves him two behind Colin Montgomerie’s record.
McIlroy has his sights set on becoming the best European golfer of all time, although some already consider him to be.
His four Majors to Ballesteros’ five and Nick Faldo’s six suggest that’s not the case. But for me, the moment that sets Faldo apart came in the 1995 Ryder Cup.
It was all down to his match as the Sunday singles came to a close and he stood one down with three to play against Curtis Strange.
Level going down 18, his presence of mind to chip out the rough and leave himself the perfect wedge to get up and down to claim par and win as Strange melted is the greatest moment in Ryder Cup history.
Watch it and marvel at the man’s powers to block out all the noise and pressure to get the job done.
Ruben Amorim leaves Sporting on a high
By Charlie Wyett
RUBEN AMORIM would have preferred to leave Lisbon in a blaze of glory after winning a third Primeira Liga title.
Yet football does not work like that. And in what was surely his final game before taking charge of Manchester United, Amorim prepared to say his goodbyes at a half-empty Estadio Jose Alvalade in a League Cup quarter-final against Nacional.
Sporting won 3-1 thanks to second-half goals by captain Morten Hjulmand and Viktor Gyokeres, who scored two.
Luis Esteves pulled back for Madeira-based Nacional.
The stadium will be a good deal more lively on Tuesday when Manchester City are here for a Champions League match — although Amorim should by then have his feet firmly under his desk at Old Trafford.
Liverpool and Aston Villa were both interested in Europe’s most sought-after coach. Even City could have been a possible destination post-Pep Guardiola.
Yet the United job is one Amorim, 39, could not turn down — even if not everyone saw it that way at Sporting last night.
There is clearly a huge split in the Portuguese club’s fan base over their coach leaving at this stage of the season with many believing he should have seen the job through.
Yet Amorim, along with the three-man coaching team who are expected to follow him, leaves a club in a much better state than when he arrived here in 2020.
Inside the stadium, there was applause — albeit muted — when his name was read out before the game along with the line-ups.
And there did not appear to be any jeers when Amorim shuffled out from the tunnel awkwardly towards the dugout.
So, while his departure is hard to take for some, none of the fans will forget his legacy.
This is a club which is back as the dominant force in Portugal. Even this term, Sporting have won their first nine league games, scoring 30 goals and conceding just two.
They are also eighth in the Champions League table, which is one hell of an effort.
In contrast, Lisbon was not exactly hit by League Cup fever last night.
Amorim made lots of changes, which saw Sporting’s star man Gyokeres, the former Coventry striker, start on the bench.
There was, however, a first appearance in six weeks for former Tottenham winger Marcus Edwards.
He is certainly one player who has been transformed by Amorim since arriving at the club from Vitoria in 2022 and will be sorry to see the coach leave.
While he changed his team, Amorim stuck with his tried and trusted formation of a back three.
It will certainly be something Manchester United’s fans will have to get used to over the coming months.
But looking at the Premier League table, none of them will be complaining about the change.
