When Ruben Amorim was confirmed as the new head coach of Manchester United, the club described him in their official release as “one of the most exciting and highly rated young coaches in European football”.
A few hours later, Diogo Dalot — who, like Amorim, is from Portugal — mentioned Amorim’s “young mentality”. And two days later, following the 1-1 draw with Chelsea, United’s interim manager, Ruud van Nistelrooy, described Amorim as a “very young, talented coach”.
Amorim’s comparative youthfulness may be debated by some. He is 39 — 40 in January — and is the eighth man in his thirties to be appointed by United, so no glass ceiling is being smashed. But the coach from Lisbon is the youngest United have appointed since Wilf McGuinness in 1969 — McGuinness was just 31 when he succeeded Sir Matt Busby.
What does being the youngest in over half a century to occupy the red-brick Old Trafford dugout mean? Amorim’s short and narrow experience as a manager — six years at Casa Pia, Braga and Sporting Lisbon in Portugal — is surely more relevant.
But Amorim is 15 years younger than his immediate predecessor, Erik ten Hag, which will bring a change of tone, viewpoint and, perhaps, relatability — the “young mentality” Dalot noted.
Amorim becomes the fourth youngest of 20 Premier League managers, joining Fabian Hurzeler, 31, at Brighton, Kieran McKenna, 38, at Ipswich and Russell Martin, 38, at Southampton as head coaches in their thirties.
At United, a club long associated with youth, Amorim also joins a list of thirty-something men who have filled the main Saturday afternoon role at the club, including Busby. Each was considered “the manager of Manchester United”, no matter how briefly or how tangentially, and if each was to consider their particular eras, they might think Amorim’s issues are not so great. Gas, innuendo or bombs will not be on his agenda.
Here are those young men.
Alf Albut is often overlooked.
Albut was the confectionery salesman who, aged 37, in 1892 became the secretary of Newton Heath FC in east Manchester. Ten years later — April 24, 1902 — Newton Heath became Manchester United.
As a club secretary’s tasks in those days would include team selection, Albut can be regarded the club’s first manager. If that seems like a stretch to some, a 1906 report in The Athletic News — a popular Manchester-based newspaper of the time — offers a contemporary opinion.
Albut is described as “bluff, jovial, hale and hearty” in a review of a book looking at the early years of Association Football in England. It is stated that without Albut and his captain Harry Stafford “there would never have been any Manchester United at all”.
Based near a chemical works close to where Manchester City play today, Albut kept Newton Heath going through difficult economic times and literally kept the lights on to ensure there was a functioning club that could be reconstructed as Manchester United.
“We have had the honour of having the gas cut off,” Albut told the Athletic News during one bad spell. His solution was a large purchase of candles.
Newton Heath were not an obscure club. They were in the Second Division in 1902 alongside West Bromwich Albion, (Woolwich) Arsenal and Burnley. Albut once defended the club in court against an accusation of “brutality” in a match.
In post for eight years, Albut would be entitled to challenge the description of one of his immediate successors, Ernest Mangnall, as being “widely acknowledged as being the club’s first manager”. That line comes from the United’s official history.
Mangnall joined in 1903, just after the name change from Newton Heath. He had previously worked for Burnley, having been born in Liverpool. Like Albut, Mangnall was 37.
With ‘manager’ and ‘coach’ not yet part of the game’s lexicon, Mangnall was called the “energetic secretary of the United Club” by the Manchester Courier. Under Mangnall United won promotion to the First Division, the top tier, in 1906.
There was a kit change — from white shirts and navy shorts to red shirts and white shorts. Then Mangnall set about recruitment, benefiting from the illegal payment scandal at Manchester City that saw 18 players banned from playing for City. The players were to be ‘auctioned’, but Mangnall understood being first is vital off the pitch as well as on it and, before the auction began, he ensured United had the signatures of City’s two stars, Billy Meredith and Sandy Turnbull.
City had been ‘Manchester’s club’ and won the FA Cup in 1904, but under Mangnall United bloomed. In 1908 they were champions of England for the first time and, in 1909, they won the FA Cup for the first time. The club was still based at Bank Street in the east of the city. By the time United won a second title, in 1911, they were at newly built Old Trafford.
A “fitness fanatic”, Mangnall was credited with tactical ploys such as playing Meredith in a deeper role. In the words of United historian Ian Marshall, Mangnall “would prove to be the first of United’s triumvirate of great managers, the predecessor of Sir Matt Busby and Sir Alex Ferguson”.
The cost of Old Trafford, however, ate into playing budgets and Mangnall was offered an exit route — by City. He moved to United’s rivals and was significant in another new stadium-build: Maine Road. After Mangnall, it would be four decades before United won the league again.
In 1921, aged 39, John Chapman became manager. A Scot, and the first non-Englishman to manage the club, Chapman was given a four-figure salary, a five-year contract and a house. It was a big deal.
He arrived in October but, by January, there was a headline “Crisis at Manchester”. Chapman had quickly signed some Scottish players but the transfers had not worked. While away trying to sign another he was recalled.
United had won one of his first 15 games and lost 12. They were relegated by April of Chapman’s first season, with the Derby Telegraph reporting United’s demotion under the headline “More Silly Tricks”. Chapman’s tactics were belittled: “It does look as though the management has lost its head.”
It took three seasons to return and Chapman got the team to ninth in 1925-26. But three months into the next season there was the following announcement: “For improper conduct in his position as Secretary-Manager of the Manchester United F.C. the Football Association has suspended Mr. J. A. Chapman from taking part in football or football management during the present season.”
Chapman declared himself at an “utter loss” as to why he had been suspended and said he had never benefited financially from his position, other than via his salary. Gossip said otherwise.
Chapman pointed out that the club did not suspend him, but they allowed him to depart nonetheless for a role in greyhound racing in Liverpool.
Chapman was replaced temporarily by a player, Clarence ‘Lal’ Hilditch, who was 32 and the club’s first player-manager. Born in Cheshire, Hilditch joined United in 1914. “A gentleman both on and off the field,” according to the Manchester Evening News, Hilditch played once for England, in a 1919 post-war ‘Victory International’ in Cardiff. In 1926-27 he kept United up.
But the club was sliding and another relegation, in 1930-31, hastened the promotion of the administrative figure who assisted Hilditch, Walter Crickmer.
Crickmer was only 31 when he was appointed in April 1931. He had been club secretary for five years. J H Davies, the businessman who bankrolled the club from the Newton Heath takeover, died in 1927. Average attendances plummeted to under 12,000 and the club’s overdraft grew. Crickmer had to cope with this and United being back in the Second Division. For the opening home game of 1931-32, against Southampton, only 3,507 spectators turned up.
United were in jeopardy and though another Manchester businessman, James Gibson, joined the board, guaranteed debts and Crickmer played a part bringing in a new Scottish manager, Scott Duncan, the club was unstable. United had to win on the last day of season 1933-34 away at Millwall to avoid dropping into the Third Division.
Promotion in 1936 was followed by relegation in 1937 and with Duncan leaving for Ipswich Town, Crickmer, now 37, was again given the top job. Up came United in 1938 and, when football was suspended in 1940 at the start of the Second World War, United were ninth in the First Division.
Crickmer remained ‘manager’ during the war, when Old Trafford was almost completely destroyed by German bombs, and was part of the process along with Louis Rocca, United’s chief scout and ‘fixer’, that saw Busby receive a letter from Rocca in December 1944 saying: “I have a great job for you if you are willing to take it on.”
Previously Crickmer and Rocca had formed, in 1937, the Manchester United Junior Athletic Club (MUJAC), essentially a youth system. United, youth, Busby, it all chimed.
“He was a wise little man, a grand little man,” Busby said of Crickmer. “He was an outstanding adjutant.”
Tragically, Crickmer was with Busby in the Munich air crash in February 1958. Busby survived, Crickmer was one of the 23 who died. He had lived his adult life through Manchester United.
Matt Busby was 36 when he became manager of United. He looked older and he knew it: “Perhaps my background had made me a little older than my years.”
Born in 1909 into a Scottish mining community near Glasgow, Busby was seven when his father Alex was killed in France in the First World War. Busby had to help his mother and three younger sisters get through each week.
He signed for Manchester City aged 18. After eight years there Busby moved to Liverpool, where he was on the books as the Second World War ended. He was 35 when contacted by United and had no managerial experience. But United recognised a future leader in Busby and gave him a five-year contract. He stayed until 1969 and made a brief comeback in 1970.
Busby advanced the club’s reputation for youthfulness. In his slim 1973 memoir Soccer At The Top, his opening chapter is called “The Young Dictator”. As he wrote: “Call it confidence, conceit, arrogance or ignorance, but I was unequivocal about it. At the advanced age of 35 I would accept the managership of Manchester United only if they would let me have all my own way.”
Chapter two is “The ‘No’ Man” due to Busby’s refusal to buy players the board recommended. He wanted to develop players.
Like all his thirty-something predecessors, Busby inherited problems. His were as great as any — due to the German bombing, in his first three seasons United ‘home’ games were played at City’s Maine Road. As Busby said in a previous book, My Story, from 1957 when memories were fresh: “Far from being a successful club, Manchester United in 1945 were on their knees.
“The Old Trafford ground was a blitzed wreck, the dressing rooms were derelict, there were no facilities for training, no offices for the staff, and United were dependent on the generosity of the neighbouring Manchester City for the fulfilling of home fixtures… United’s offices were temporarily at the Cornbrook Cold Stores.”
United were not champions again until 1952 but, as Busby said, they were runners-up in 1947, 1948, 1949 and 1951. They also won the FA Cup in 1948, when Busby was 38.
Walter Crickmer watching Sir Matt sign his 1st Utd contract in 1945 #mufc #munich pic.twitter.com/KtarfG9tY5
— 🇾🇪Utd Before Fergie🇾🇪 (@UtdBeforFergie) January 29, 2022
Just as significantly, United were gaining a name for attractive football and youth. The ‘Busby Babes’ tag began to appear in the early 1950s; when the FA Youth Cup started in 1952-53, United won the first five.
In 1955-56 United were champions again, then in 1956-57. They were going for a treble in 1957-58 when Munich happened. Busby was a pioneer in European football and almost died in the crash. He was 48.
He returned to Old Trafford and in the 1960s built the team of Denis Law, George Best and Bobby Charlton — all three won the Ballon d’Or. United won the European Cup in 1968, 10 years after Munich. Busby retired, a living legend, at the end of the following season.
How do you follow a legend? This was the stern question confronting Wilf McGuinness in 1969.
He was 31 and had been one of Busby’s players — McGuinness was so good he made his United debut at 17. Injury at 22 brought a premature end to his playing career and he went into coaching. He was in charge of the reserves.
But McGuinness had not been a manager and as Law, writing in his autobiography “The King”, saw it: “Wilf was too young, too close to us.”
Bold decisions such as dropping Law and Charlton hurt all three. United finished eighth in McGuinness’s one full season and reached the semi-final of the FA Cup and League Cup. But by Christmas of his second season, with results stuttering and Best unmanageable, McGuinness was gone and Busby was back to see out the season.
Ruben Amorim has the distance from United and a legendary predecessor — Sir Alex Ferguson — that McGuinness did not have. Nor are the question marks over finances and Old Trafford’s future for Amorim’s desk. He has been appointed to improve players, bring freshness and return a certain young mentality.
It’s been tried before and sometimes it’s worked.
(Top photos: Getty Images; designed by Eamonn Dalton)
