Ruben Amorim celebrated his one-year anniversary at Manchester United last week, but showed his true colours long before arriving at Old Trafford. The Portuguese head coach is enjoying a fruitful spell at the club, having won three Premier League games in a row before drawing with Nottingham Forest.
He will be hoping to get back to winning ways on Saturday when the Red Devils travel to Tottenham, who played in midweek and could be suffering from some fatigue following their emphatic victory over Copenhagen. Amorim appears to be a popular figure within the squad and his character has long been on display.
Seven years ago, Petter Skogsletten and Geoff Labine accompanied Amorim during a week-long placement whilst he completed a master’s degree in high-performance football coaching at the University of Lisbon.
The Portuguese coach possesses a distinguished background, having secured 14 international caps and made 153 appearances for Benfica throughout his playing career.
Yet both Skogsletten and Labine, alongside professor Antonio Veloso who organised the programme, characterised United’s manager as “humble.”
Skogsletten revealed to The Athletic: “For him, it doesn’t matter if you’ve been playing at this level, he’s at the same level as you. He opened up and he was himself with you.”
Labine backed up his former course-mate’s assessment by revealing how Amorim had turned down a flashy, costly motor to reflect his standing as one of football’s most sought-after managers in favour of his trusty Smart car.
“I would joke with Ruben because he’s driving the most unassuming Smart car, those little cube cars,” Labine disclosed.
“I’m looking for the Maserati or the Bugatti or something. He goes: ‘No Geoff, you don’t understand. I’m different. I’m not like that.'”.
Amorim created a favourable impression with his conduct since joining the club a year ago.
On Thursday, he responded to Cristiano Ronaldo claiming that the head coach can’t work “miracles” with the talent at his disposal in Manchester.
Amorim said: “He knows he has a huge impact in everything he says. What we need to do is focus on the future. We know that we, as a club, made a lot of mistakes in the past, but we are trying to change that. So let’s not focus on what happened.
“Let’s focus on what we are doing now, and we are doing that. We are changing a lot of things in the structure, the way we do things, that we want the players to behave. We are doing that, and we are improving.
“So let’s focus on the way we are doing things; we are improving. Let’s continue and forget a little bit [about] the past.”
