Rúben Amorim’s players were in tears and, no, it wasn’t because he had labelled them the worst team in the club’s history, nor had he smashed any televisions, as he is reported to have done last weekend following Manchester United’s defeat by Brighton. And yet Amorim’s current troubles are simply a magnified version of his first steps into coaching at Casa Pia, the Portuguese third-tier team he took charge of aged 33.
Amorim’s future was in doubt, his tactics were questioned, he was losing games: it all seems familiar. And yet he survived, which is not to say this is how it will end at United. In this chapter of his career, a portrait of a remarkable young coach with unusual empathy does emerge. Marcus Rashford might raise an arched eyebrow at that but perhaps he should stick around to discover the real Rúben. Amorim is likely to be a force in European coaching as long as the horror show of United’s chaotic ownership doesn’t drag him into a vortex of failure.
“He is a magician,” says Carlos Pires, the sporting director at Casa Pia who, at some risk to himself, appointed a man with no coaching experience to his first job in 2018. “Everything he touches turns to gold. I told him: ‘In 10 years’ time, whether you are at Manchester United or coaching in the Lisbon leagues, you can tell people I’m the crazy guy who gave you the opportunity.’ And yes, I did use Manchester United as the example, even back then.”
Pires is the man who had Amorim in his office offering to resign after the early days went so badly that he felt honour-bound to quit. Pires wouldn’t hear of it. By the end, the entire club were extraordinarily invested in the former Benfica and Portugal midfielder.
The day the tears flowed was the day Amorim had to leave, midway through a season, a complicated story of coaching licences and a debate over whether Amorim was sufficiently qualified to be on the bench that ultimately resulted in a six-point deduction for Casa Pia, taking them off top spot. One of Amorim’s captains of that team, Abel Pereira, takes up the story of that day. “Ruben said to us: ‘My children’ – he called us his children – ‘My children, I will leave, because I don’t want you to lose more points because of me.’ And there were 24 players in the dressingroom and all the guys were crying. A lot of those guys hadn’t played more than two or three minutes. And they cried the same or more than us. This is the truth.”
If that seems overly intense, what Pereira then relates makes it credible. “In our team, we had a guy, Deritson, who worked nights at McDonald’s until early morning. He had four kids. And he spoke with the captains and said: ‘Brothers, I need to tell you something: the CPCJ [the national commission responsible for protecting children in Portugal] is going to take my children away.’ He and his wife had only two rooms, he had [poor] conditions in his house.
“When he told us this we thought: ‘My God.’ You would do everything for your children. But what could we do? We had no money. So the captains knocked on Ruben’s door and we spoke with him. ‘Don’t worry, I will fix it,’ he said. We trained and by 6pm that day he had called me, saying: ‘Don’t worry, I have a house for Deritson.’ He arranged the house, paid two years’ of rent for this kid.” Deritson spoke about the story himself in the Portuguese paper, A Bola, in June 2020, confirming what happened and calling Amorim an “angel”.
“Sometimes people say, ‘Oh Ruben has a lot of money’, but a lot of people have money but don’t give away one cent to anyone,” Pereira says. “Ruben told me: ‘I don’t want anyone knowing this,’ and I said to Ruben: ‘Sorry, but I need to tell our team.’ [Amorim replied:] ‘No, I don’t want that.’ But one week later, Deritson was smiling a lot and we told the team. And after this, I think we didn’t lose one f**king game.”
What makes the story more extraordinary is that Deritson was a less-exalted squad player at Casa Pia, often on the bench, not a star of the team. That, instead, was Gonçalo Gregório, who scored 24 goals that season, including a hat-trick that saved Amorim’s career. “I don’t know if I saved his career but I guess I helped,” Gregório says on the phone from Qatar, where he is in midwinter training with Armenia’s FC Noah. “We were very bad for the first two games, lost both and the third game was a difficult one away from home.”
It was at Pinhal Novo, a small town just south of Lisbon, across the 10-mile long Vasco da Gama bridge that spans the Tagus river estuary. Pinhal Novo is an unprepossessing place. The municipal stadium, home of Pinhalnovense, has a small stand for a couple of hundred fans and a worn artificial pitch. Yet this is where Amorim’s fledgling coaching career almost ended.
As Pires says: “He came to me in my office that week [after losing the first two games] and said: ‘Carlos, if we don’t win, I will leave. It’s my fault.’”
“No way. We’re very satisfied with your work,” Pires insisted. That said, it would have been harder to justify that faith had Casa Pia lost. Thankfully Gregório opened the scoring with his left, a strike he recalls as the best of his hat-trick because he is right footed.
Casa Pia triumphed 3-0 and embarked on a winning run, at which point Amorim came to see Pires again. “He told me: ‘Carlos, I want to change the tactics.’ I thought: ‘You’re kidding. You didn’t change after two defeats and now after three wins you want to change? It makes no sense.’ And he explained to me: ‘With this 3-4-3 formation we will be more solid defensively but be able to attack with four men.’” And a style, with which United fans are becoming familiar, was born.
Casa Pia were runaway leaders until the coaching licence dispute and the points deduction (they were eventually promoted that season anyway) and the mark Amorim made there has never been forgotten. “There was one game against a team that we were losing 2-0. We had a lot of possession but they attacked twice and scored twice,” Pereira says. “[At half-time] in the dressingroom, he said to us: ‘Today, you are going to win for me. Because I know that we are much better than this f**king team. And I know that at the end of this game, we will be crying with our victory.’
“After this he left the room, went straight to his bench and didn’t say anything more. Nothing. He said nothing. We went to the pitch and we won, I think 4-2. After the game, in the dressingroom, he said to us: ‘This is my f**king team.’ And he cried. Because, you know, he felt it.”
That passion has been evident this past week. The question now is whether his story at United will end in similar tears of joy. Or just in tears. – Guardian
