“I can be ruthless when I have to be,” said Ruben Amorim on Friday afternoon. Manchester United’s new head coach was introduced to the press for the first time and made a convincing start to his media duties. Amorim usually has a smile on his face but warned he is not a soft touch.
“There is some places to have fun and some places to work hard,” he explained. “I’m not like that kind of guy who wants to show he’s the boss. I think they will feel it in the small details, that I can be the smiling one but then when we have a job to do, I will be a different person and they understand that.”
Although there has been a wide smile on Amorim’s face in almost every photo since he touched down in Manchester, his time at Old Trafford won’t be all sunshine and rainbows. The winter frost has coincided with his arrival and he must produce results in a busy festive period, but the 39-year-old strongly believes he is the “right man at the right time.”
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Amorim needs to transform the fortunes of a side that sit 13th in the Premier League, so he is bound to encounter challenges along the way but he doesn’t lack self confidence. United believe they have hired one the finest young coaches in European football and a club source recently admitted his outstanding communication skills will be a helpful asset.
Amorim made a strong impression in his first press conference ahead of facing Ipswich Town this weekend and demonstrated his savvy communication skills. “It’s so much harder to come to a team in the middle of a season because you have to know the players during the games,” he said.
“You’re talking about no national team periods to work with the players, it’s just games. It depends if you are winning it’s a lot of fun having a lot of games and trying to make some changes tactically and winning games. But if you’re losing, you don’t have the time in training to work on everything you want to work.
“I think where you can improve a team is in training. This is the most important aspect. You can get the players to recover and react really fast, but if you don’t make any exercise with that, it’s really hard to do that on video or in recovery trainings. So it’s really hard in this way but we will find ways to try cope with that.”
Amorim’s appointment has generated huge excitement and the feel good factor around the club has returned. United fans are hoping the Portuguese is different from his predecessors, who have all struggled under the shadow of the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson in the last 11 years. “No, not yet. I didn’t have that opportunity,” said Amorim when asked if he’d had a chance to meet Ferguson.
“It’s hard to copy someone, so I have to be me. Of course I’m not the best person in here to show the history of Manchester United, it should be the club first and also me.
“I’m always paying attention to those details and trying to focus our players in the history of the club, not the recent history, so you have to be very demanding. This is a club that has to win.
“So we have to show that [history] to our players but it’s a different time. I cannot be the same guy Sir Alex Ferguson was. I need to have a different approach, but I can also be demanding.”
Amorim vowed to be his own man but has something in common with Ferguson: a trust in young players. Amorim’s success at Sporting Lisbon was underpinned by talented players from the Portuguese club’s academy and he is expected to use a similar formula at United.
“It’s the project of Manchester United,” he said. “Nowadays, you need young guys from the academy for everything, to bring that history of the club because they feel the club in a different way.
“But also because you have all these rules with financial fair play when a player from our academy is so much different [worth more in FFP] to the players we sell – that we bought and that we sell. So everything is connected, I will try to help all the players and especially the young ones.”
The last question was about Pep Guardiola. The Manchester City boss has just signed a new two-year contract but was defeated by Amorim in the Champions League earlier in the month, with City suffering a 4-1 defeat to Sporting away from home.
“I think it’s a problem for everyone here,” said Amorim. “But we have so much to do, we can’t focus on anyone. We just have to focus on our club, improving our club and not focusing on the other clubs. It’s amazing if you can beat that team, it’s a good sign, but let’s focus on United.”
