How Good is Rúben Amorim?
With Xabi Alonso set to stay at Bayer Leverkusen next season, Rúben Amorim is the new favourite to replace Jürgen Klopp this summer.
International breaks aren’t usually that great, but the most recent one was extra grim for Liverpool supporters. On top of the Reds going a fortnight without kicking a ball, Xabi Alonso decided to add to our misery by ruling himself out of the running to succeed Jürgen Klopp this summer.
The impossible task of replacing the irreplaceable has just got a lot more interesting. Alonso seemed like a cert to occupy the Anfield dugout next term, but he’s confirmed his decision to stay at Bayer Leverkusen, forcing Liverpool to explore alternatives.
Fresh reports suggest Rúben Amorim is the new first-choice option. The Sporting CP boss, much like Alonso, is leading his domestic league right now, and he’s heavily tipped to land the role.
The big question, then. How good is he?
So unlike Alonso, we’ve got a lot more evidence to assess Amorim. He’s been on the scene for about five years now, and since his emergence, he’s made a real difference in Portugal.
Amorim’s accolates at surface level are enough to grab your attention. In his first job at Braga, he took over in the middle of the season and managed only 13 games in total, winning ten.
His team suffered only two defeats, with both of those coming against Steven Gerrard’s Rangers outfit in the Europa League. Amorim’s Braga side beat FC Porto twice, Sporting twice and Benfica once during that short 13-game period.
In fact, he made enough of an impact in just three months for Sporting to poach him in the March of that season. They paid his £8.5m release clause, which made him the third-most expensive manager ever. He didn’t even possess a UEFA Pro or A Licence at the time.
Sporting haven’t looked back since. In his first full campaign at the helm, he delivered the Primeira Liga title for the first time in 19 years. The Portuguese top flight is painted as a three-team competition, but it’s really all about Porto and Benfica.
Amorim was a disruptor in that sense — just like Klopp has been throughout his career — and he’s proceeded to win a bunch of trophies over the past few years, with his second league title appearing likely to follow this season. Sporting currently have a one-point lead at the summit with a game in hand.
This guy has pretty much completed Portugal, and he’s still just 39 years old, three years younger than Alonso. This Substack is all about going deeper than what you can see on the surface, but it’s hard to completely ignore just how well Amorim has done in his homeland when it comes to securing results.
The stuff under the hood is what we care about from a data perspective, but the history of football has taught us that special managers tend to massively overdeliver at the beginning of their respective careers, even when presented with uphill tasks.
Think José Mourinho at Porto, Klopp at Borussia Dortmund, Rafael Benítez at Valencia, Alex Ferguson at Aberdeen. They all ended up with the finest ingredients further down the line, but also succeeded when they didn’t quite have the best players at their disposal.
I don’t think you necessarily need silverware behind you to manage Liverpool — because what exactly do you expect Roberto De Zerbi to win with Brighton and Hove Albion or Sassuolo? — but the fact Amorim is already a champion does feel like it counts for something.
During Sporting’s first league title win under Amorim, they broke a national record by going 32 matches unbeaten. That sort of thing doesn’t happen by chance. You need probability on your side if you’re going to roll a six every week.
Unsurprisingly, then, Amorim’s underlying numbers look good. His team tends to showcase a healthy performance level, which is why positive results often follow suit, especially this season.
Sporting are creating around 16.7 shots per match in the Primeira Liga this term, with those efforts worth roughly 2.1 xG. Benfica are the only team in the division with marginally better offensive numbers, posting 16.8 shots and 2.2 xG.
On the defensive end, Amorim’s side look brilliant. They face just 7.7 (!!!) shots per match, worth a total of about 0.66 xG. For context, no team across Europe’s big six leagues faces fewer efforts on their goal. Porto concede around 8.6 per match, with Benfica facing 10.2 per match.
Their attack looks busy and their defence looks very quiet, and that’s exactly what you want. This is dominance.
We can capture their precise level of dominance by taking what Sporting create in attack in xG terms, and subtracting what they give away in defence, giving us their xG difference. The bigger the number, the more you’re getting probability on your side.
Sporting’s non-penalty xG difference per match is +1.42. That is excellent. For perspective, Porto and Benfica are posting +1.06 and +1.29. Alonso’s Leverkusen are posting +1.20. Arsenal are on +1.27 and Liverpool are on +1.05.
In each of their previous seasons under Amorim, Sporting have posted +1.22, +1.42 and +1.12 in the Primeira Liga. Positive numbers are to be expected to a certain extent due to the quality of their players in comparison to the average team in Portugal, but this is good stuff. And in the season before he took over, Sporting posted just +0.38.
The Portuguese leaders are truly taking care of their results with their performances nowadays, and guess who is largely responsible for those performances? The man in charge, who dictates the playing style.
At this point, it’s worth noting that Sporting are having a very hot campaign when it comes to finishing. They have overperformed their xG by 16.6 goals so far, which is pretty outrageous.
The next-best side in the division is Estoril with an overperformance of 8.4 goals, and the best finishers in the Premier League this season have been Arsenal with an overperformance of 8.5 goals. Sporting are on double that amount, which has naturally helped them pick up wins.
That’s on the players for putting the ball in the net, not Amorim, so it’s not the sort of thing we can expect him to bring to Anfield. At the same time, though, he absolutely isn’t benefiting from his goalkeeper.
Antonio Adán is aged 36, and it’s showing. Not only has the Spaniard conceded about three goals more than expected this term, but he places bottom of the whole division for defensive actions outside of his penalty box per 90. In other words, he can’t sweep.
With Amorim eager to install a proactive pressing approach — although he does encourage a mid-block of sorts pretty often — you can’t help but imagine how much he’d value Alisson Becker in his goal. The Brazilian number one could unlock additional aspects of his game.
Now for the negatives. There aren’t many, but Liverpool will naturally have a few concerns. He seems to really love 3-4-3, for example, which could prove to be a sticking point.
Some managers take their principles with them from job to job, but change their system depending on the players on offer. Pep Guardiola does this, for example, as does Klopp. Amorim seems to possess fixed principles and a fixed formation.
I’m assuming a lot here, but the ex-Portugal international looks like he’s more in the mould of Antonio Conte in the sense that his preffered system would probably come with him, which isn’t a bad thing until you take a glance at Liverpool’s squad.
There are a few reasons as to why the Reds don’t suit 3-4-3 at the moment, not least because of the central defenders at the club. You’ve got Virgil van Dijk, for a start, who specialises in playing as part of a two and has publicly stated his disapproval of back-three systems when representing his nation.
He is so good that he doesn’t need an extra centre-back by his side. Ibrahima Konaté isn’t that different, either. The Frenchman is complete enough to manage tricky attackers without support, so you can get away with deploying him as part of a two. He also gets injured often, so you can’t count on him to be available every week.
Joël Matip has a contract which is due to expire this summer, Joe Gomez no longer feels like a true centre-back, and none of these guys — including Jarell Quansah — are left footed.
Further forward, Liverpool invested in a load of number eights in the last summer transfer window. Dominik Szoboszlai, Curtis Jones, Harvey Elliott and Ryan Gravenberch all lean towards box-to-box roles as opposed to playing in a double pivot.
Liverpool’s squad would probably have to undergo some surgery over the next few windows if Amorim was to enforce a real shift from 4-3-3 to 3-4-3, which isn’t ideal.
The key outfielders in the team at the moment are arguably Van Dijk, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Mohamed Salah, and I’m not sure you really optimise any of them by employing 3-4-3.
Amorim has demonstrated an ability to make subtle tweaks after selling key midfielders such as João Palhinha, Matheus Nunes and Manuel Ugarte, but it’s still interesting to think about how all of the pieces would fit.
There is also a question mark attached to his lack of experience outside of Portugal. How good is the Primeira Liga in comparison to the Premier League? He’s never managed outside of his native land, and his record in Europe isn’t great.
Now, we must remember that a manager is only as good as his players for the most part, so it’s difficult for Sporting to win the Champions League, for example. Nevertheless, Amorim has managed 34 matches in Europe across his career, winning 12 and losing 13.
You can draw many different conclusions from that record. Maybe he’s not that good when he’s up against the elite, maybe he can’t cope outside of Portugal, or maybe his game is so offensive and demanding that his players can’t quite deliver when they aren’t the favourites?
If you give him Liverpool’s squad, it’s hard not to imagine his record naturally improving due to better players, but it’s definitely one element to keep an eye on.
All things considered, Amorim looks very attractive, perhaps even the most attractive of all the managers left on the shortlist. His English is flawless, he’s an established champion, and the data behind his team’s modern success is golden. He knows how to make a team more than the sum of its parts.
Amorim has an element of risk attached to his signature, but so does every other candidate. If he was able to reproduce his Sporting work at Anfield, Liverpool would be just fine.
The defensive data is astounding! Excellent piece again Josh
Not even read this one but eagerly awaited and love it already! Can’t wait to get stuck in