Ruben Amorim will be reunited with Manchester United on Saturday afternoon as his AC Milan side takes them on in a pre-season friendly. The Italian club appointed the Portuguese as their head coach in June, just five months after he was sacked by United following a disastrous spell in charge.
The 41-year-old was highly thought of before taking the United job due to his success with Sporting CP and arrived bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. But thanks to his own actions and the wider chaos at the club, he endured a miserable time at Old Trafford.
His opposite number in the dugout for Saturday's friendly is Michael Carrick, whose relative success with United since January has only evoked more negative feelings towards Amorim's own dismal reign.
Smashed TV and Dressing Room Fury
Having left his top-of-the-table Sporting side in November 2024 to join United mid-season, Amorim quickly realised the monumental scale of his task. A 3-1 home defeat to Brighton in January 2025 marked a seventh loss in his first 15 games in charge.
After the loss, Amorim branded his United team the worst in the club's 147-year history - something he quickly admitted he shouldn't have said. His brutal comments demonstrated his frustration with the lack of progress as United's players failed to adapt to his much-criticised 3-4-2-1 formation.
That frustration also spilt out in the dressing room as he damaged a TV used for tactics at half-time in a display of fury. Whilst he later took responsibility and admitted he would try to do better as a young head coach, the two incidents showed a degree of volatility.
Europa League Final Heartbreak
As the season wore on, United's dreadful form made it increasingly clear that they would not qualify for Europe for the 2025/26 campaign via the Premier League. Winning the Europa League, of which they had reached the final, became of the utmost importance for securing Champions League qualification.
However, Amorim's side showed very little quality in the Bilbao showpiece and were not helped by his selection decisions, including leaving Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo out of the starting line-up. Tottenham secured a 1-0 victory and ended a 17-year trophy drought.
The defeat, along with a 15th-place finish in the league, was a humiliating end to an already exhausting and miserable campaign. Amorim even said he was willing to walk away the very next day if that's what the board desired.
"In this moment, I am not going to be here defending myself, [it] is not my style," he said. "I cannot do it, is really hard for me. So I have nothing to show to the fans to say I am going to improve because of this, I had these problems, I will not do nothing."
Grimsby Town Debacle
Following a summer where United notably backed him by signing three high-quality forwards in Benjamin Sesko, Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha, fans expected to see improvements. But after a defeat to Arsenal and a draw at Fulham came perhaps the lowest point in Amorim's United career.
In August 2025, United suffered a shock defeat to League Two side Grimsby Town in the Carabao Cup second round. As his side lost the penalty shootout, images of Amorim hunkering in the dugout rather than showing real leadership became ingrained in viewers' minds.
Having managed just 17 wins across 45 games, Amorim cut a defeated figure post-match. He said when asked if he understood what had happened at Blundell Park: "No. But I'm the manager. It should be my job to understand what happened."
Quit Threats and Exit
A period of good form in October proved to be merely a brief respite and poor results quickly returned. He had said earlier in the season: "Sometimes I want to quit, sometimes I want to be here for 20 years, sometimes I love to be with my players, sometimes I don't want to be with them."
Things came to a head after a 1-1 draw at Elland Road, in what would prove to be his final post-match outburst as the man in charge at Old Trafford.
"I came here to be the manager of Manchester United, not to be the coach of Manchester United. That is clear," Amorim said. "I know that my name is not [Thomas] Tuchel, it's not [Antonio] Conte, it's not [Jose] Mourinho, but I'm the manager of Manchester United. And it's going to be like this for 18 months or when the board decides to change."
United's higher-ups ultimately decided enough was enough and dismissed him the following day. Under-18s coach Darren Fletcher was brought in as caretaker boss with the club sitting in sixth place. Carrick stepped in later that month and changed United's fortunes. Now, things will go full circle as the Portuguese boss takes on the man who ultimately supplanted him.
