It was just one match. A very bad match, admittedly, settled by a very poor goal, but it was still just one game decided by one moment.
Tottenham Hotspur forward Brennan Johnson’s attempt at scoring went backwards, hit Luke Shaw and rolled apologetically over a white line. And with that, the immediate fates of Ange Postecoglou and/or Ruben Amorim are immediately brighter or darker. One might keep his job after all, while the other has half-volunteered to leave his.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be that way. Perhaps we should forensically study their respective bodies or work and their ‘processes’, trusted or otherwise, before making a full and fair assessment.
But football doesn’t work like that. Trophies matter, finals matter. They create heroes and villains, winners and losers and can define careers. And the reputations of Postecoglou and Amorim have altered after Wednesday night.
It happens. Gareth Southgate could have walked into most jobs in English football as a two-time European champion, for example. Instead, England lost two finals and opinion on him and his England legacy remains inconclusive, fairly or unfairly.
Conversely, Manchester United boss Erik ten Hag helped to earn himself five more months at Old Trafford by winning the FA Cup last year. Beating Manchester City in a one-off match was a factor in Ten Hag being given a contract extension and United spending £200million ($268m) on players the Dutchman wanted.
Had United been comfortably beaten by City at Wembley — say by a 3-0 scoreline — would Ten Hag have stayed and been given a war chest? It feels unlikely.
Up until fairly recently, it hadn’t felt like Amorim’s position was in any danger; yes, United’s league form was awful, but the Europa League was ticking along nicely and the consensus, of course, was that he needed at least one big transfer window to shape the squad in his image (or, more pertinently in this case, his formation) after taking over from… Ten Hag.
And then, well, the losing didn’t stop. And United started being historically bad. And things like this happened.
Most of all, though, Amorim has started talking himself down. This is unusual in manager PR parlance, but Amorim has twice offered to leave if it is felt he’s no longer the man for the job.
“Let’s see (about my future),” he said on Wednesday night. “I am always open. If the board and fans feel I am not the right guy, I will go in the next day without any conversation about compensation, but I will not quit.”
Reverse psychology? Pure transparency? The human equivalent of a turkey voting for Christmas?
Not in Amorim’s favour, if he even wants the job anymore, is his failure to enlist any kind of consistently coherent, stylish attacking football, let alone winning football. United’s best moments in the league have come away at Manchester City and Liverpool and at Arsenal in the FA Cup when they Spursed their way to victory, but the limp manner they rather embarrassingly took to Wednesday night’s task does not reflect well.
Given all the ball and most of the play, United’s sideways, backwards approach comprised a succession of hopeful crosses and long balls and culminated with Harry Maguire up front. Again. It was painful to watch.
He needs time to implement change but what he wants to do — i.e. reinvent United’s style and transform the culture of a dressing room that looks devoid of leadership and strong-willed personalities — will take money. Lots of it. And this is a club that has splashed a net spend of almost £600m in the past five years and recently sacked hundreds of employees.
There is a pattern at United, one of decay, decline and repeated underperformance that feels less and less like it is particularly the fault of its head coaches.
Sacking Amorim, or accepting his resignation, feels more like the start of the next merry-go-round than the solution to United’s many, many deeply embedded issues surrounding culture and recruitment.
With the Premier League mid-table teams getting stronger — and with United having budgeted for Europa League football at least in the coming years — this summer feels pivotal for many reasons.
Conversely, Postecoglou’s reputation has somehow emerged from a soul-crushing few months significantly enhanced.
With increasingly fraught press conferences and interviews, immense pressure from the stands, and cross words with fans, the Australian has looked utterly broken.
And yet, his delivery of a trophy at the club that couldn’t win trophies is significant. Antonio Conte, Jose Mourinho, Mauricio Pochettino, even Andre Villas-Boas and Nuno Espirito Santo, were all trophy winners elsewhere in their careers — but not at Spurs.
To finish fifth in year one, overcoming the considerable loss of Harry Kane, was a great start. To end a 17-year trophy drought in year two is even more impressive.
Can you sack someone who has just given the fans and the club what they craved?
“Whatever happens, happens,” Postecoglou told TNT Sports. “We’re still building this team. My thought process is trying to build a team that can be successful for four, five, six years. But I’m the manager of the football club, that decision is not in my hands.
“I do (want to stay). I don’t feel like I’ve completed the job yet, we’re still building. But the moment I accepted the role, I had one thing in my head and that was to win something. We’ve done that now and now we can build on it.”
Chairman Daniel Levy doesn’t strike a tone as a sentimental type of guy. But, given his levels of unpopularity with the Spurs fanbase, would he dare to go against what seems to be the goodwill of most of their supporters, or many of the players, to sack Postecoglou?
It’s hard to argue, with those achievements of fifth and a trophy in two years, with him having earned another season.
He has arguably been left short with Spurs’ recruitment. It was clear that Spurs, with all their injury issues last season, would need a deeper squad, not least in defence, with them playing in Europe this season. That wasn’t forthcoming.
Postecoglou has repeatedly stated the need for culture change at the club and now is his chance to enact it, with the trophy-based weight finally off their shoulders.
And yet, the manner in which Spurs finally won something does raise question marks.
It wouldn’t if Postecoglou hadn’t repeatedly asserted throughout his reign that he was hired to play a certain brand of football and would never, ever sacrifice his principles.
Spurs had 27 per cent possession and three shots at goal. They wasted time and sh**housed their way to victory. This was the opposite of ‘Ange-ball’.
Does that matter when deciding his future? Well, it’s difficult to know whether to chastise him for abandoning his beliefs, or praise him for ditching the stubborn streak and showing adaptability.
There was something to admire, though, about his unyielding approach, attacking Manchester City at the Etihad, or refusing to substitute players when slipping to defeat at Brighton & Hove Albion (from being 2-0 up) because they needed to suffer and learn. Here was a man with steadfast beliefs about how the game should be played. Bravo.
And yet here they were, going all Chelsea 2012 to win a trophy at any cost. It was what he was hired to do, and yet it also wasn’t.
Postecoglou also admitted after the final that he focused fully on the Europa League from January, confirming what we had already seen for ourselves.
That doesn’t bode well for next season, combining at least eight Champions League matches with three domestic competitions, coupled with the inevitable injuries that ‘Ange-ball’, if it’s revived, would bring.
So there are no easy answers to these two posers. Postecoglou has probably earned his shot, Alan Partridge-style, at another series season, but were he to be sacked, you could see the logic.
Amorim should probably stay, but when a manager starts talking himself out of a job amid the worst season in the club’s living memory, he can’t be safe either.
What can be said without doubt is that the culture at both clubs and the decision-making above Amorim and Postecoglou has been questionable. Without the decision makers also changing, it’s hard not to envisage more of the same next season, whoever is in the dugout.
(Top photo: Cesar Manso/AFP via Getty Images)