Ruben Amorim and his six-man leadership group have finally brought optimism back to Carrington after last year's season from hell
Everyone stood alone with their thoughts, teammates unable to even look each other in the eye. Brothers in arms they were not, just a battalion of wounded soldiers suffering with palpable shellshock.
On that Bilbao pitch three months ago, Ruben Amorim’s grand plans for Manchester United lay in tatters. Yet neither the Portuguese coach, nor any of his Europa League final losers, offered condolences to one another.
Nobody seemed to know where to go from here. Missing out on qualification for Europe left United directionless and forlorn. Another post-Ferguson season gone, this time worse than any other that preceded it.
Yet fast forward to the eve of the new Premier League season, and optimism has taken hold once more.
At the opening of the club’s elite new training facility last week, those same players were draped all over each other, laughing jovially as Sir Jim Ratcliffe cut the ribbon.
Without any results to provide any uplift, such frivolity was strange. Yet Amorim needed a pre-season to ensure that last year’s campaign from hell is quickly confined to the “never to be spoken about again” category.
‘Fans adored them’
Operation Forget 2024-25 all started on the club’s post-season tour to Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong.
“I didn’t want to go and neither did any player,” one club insider tells The i Paper. “The mood on the plane was not good. The players understood why they were there, but nobody wanted it.
“In the end, though, it helped start to lift spirits.”
SOLNA, SWEDEN - JULY 19: Ruben Amorim, Manager of Manchester United, takes photos with fans after the pre-season friendly match between Manchester United and Leeds United at Strawberry Arena on July 19, 2025 in Solna, Sweden. (Photo by Linnea Rheborg/Getty Images)
Amorim poses with fans on tour (Photo: Getty)
The matches didn’t go to plan but off the field, with plenty of time to kill, players enjoyed lots of downtime together. They visited nightclubs, sensibly, without club chaperones, and whizzed around on mopeds, all helping everyone move on.
“The adulation of supporters over there helped,” another club source says. “After finishing 15th, to have thousands of supporters still going crazy took some players by surprise.”
More freedom
The leadership group – Amorim, sporting director Jason Wilcox, and CEO Omar Berrada – saw something in the players’ behaviour in Asia they liked. They took a more relaxed approach to discipline on the following pre-season trip in the United States. And it worked.
In Chicago, where the club spent most of their time before winning two and drawing one of the Premier League Summer Series friendlies, United trained early in the morning. From 1pm onwards the players could spend time together in the relative anonymity in which the US allows soccer players to operate.
Obviously there are still groups of Spanish speakers or Portuguese compatriots in the squad, but a lack of cliques normally commonplace at top English clubs helped enhance this good-vibes only aura to United.
To sum up the closeness, when given one night off in Chicago, instead of going off in different groups and finding the nearest dentist’s chair, the entire squad went for a first ever group meal, organised by themselves and were all back by 11pm curfew. It did not go unnoticed.
A group night out
There was a feeling that it could be just tour behaviour, forced fun. Nonetheless, the day after United returned home, the squad went to see Drake at the Co-op Live Arena. Under no pressure to do anything, back in their normal lives, they still wanted to be together.
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - AUGUST 09: Bruno Fernandes of Manchester United reacts during the pre-season friendly match between Manchester United and ACF Fiorentina at Old Trafford on August 09, 2025 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Matt McNulty/Getty Images)
Fernandes is part of a six-man leadership group (Photo: Getty)
Unlikely friendships are forming, like Bruno Fernandes and Joshua Zirkzee, who one insider said have a “great dynamic”. Many videos of the squad involved somebody giving new youngster Diego Leon a noogie.
He has been described as the little brother of the group, with Casemiro and Fernandes really taking to the teenager who has spent all of his life in Paraguay until now.
Perhaps the biggest influence on the mental wellbeing uptick is the opening of the new, revamped Carrington.
A new home from home
“Everything was a labyrinth, all these corridors were dark with no daylight, you couldn’t tell where you were going,” Patrick Campbell from Fosters and Partners architects, who oversaw the renovation, said as he showed The i Paper around the lavish facility.
“Now we have opened it up, you head to the natural light, it is all about being human focused.”
It just became part of the gallows humour around United: in winter, time at Carrington meant there was a chance you wouldn’t see any daylight. Dark corridors took you to windowless indoor training pitches, meetings and depressing communal spaces.
The facilities have finally caught up with everyone else. There are underwater treadmills, high altitude training rooms, CAT scanners and those vital smart urinals that tell you how hydrated you really are.
Padel and TVs
It is the attention to the players’ mental welfare – they played a huge part in the design process – that has made the biggest impact. On-site padel courts were their idea too.
Everything is open, glass-fronted. Even the manager’s office. Togetherness at the heart of every decision. Think a high-end Airport Lounge – oak panelling, Italian leather sofas, huge flat screens everywhere.
There’s a barber’s shop, complete with spiralling barber’s pole, next to every modern footballer’s must-have gadget – the gaming simulator. Ayden Heaven sat atop the Formula One simulator at the time of visiting.
“We’re getting to a level where this club deserves and now it’s up to us, on the pitch, to also match that standard,” Diogo Dalot said.
“If we’re talking about Man Utd, we should have the best facilities in the world. The big thing is now there’s going to be no excuses.”
A new leadership group
Dalot is part of a new, surprising list of players named in Amorim’s player leadership group. It is not the most stellar cast – Tom Heaton, Harry Maguire, Dalot, Lisandro Martinez, Noussair Mazraoui and skipper Fernandes – but the picks are down to how those key dressing room figures behave and conduct themselves.
Amorim has had a noticeable glow-up, as coaches often do away from the Premier League’s unrelenting schedule. Senior figures have insisted it is not just down to some Portuguese vitamin D back home.
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Time to work on his beloved 3-4-3 system is where Amorim thrives. In the new Zen training centre, you will mostly find Amorim out of his own designated office and in the conference room with his close-knit staff trying to find every tweak to finally awaken this sleeping giant from its slumber.
The player leadership group is helping lessen the workload.
“Yes, but only naturally,” Heaton laughed when asked if he had given his first bollocking. “It’s not just about delivering bollockings. It’s also about supporting people who need it.”
Expectations ahead of their curtain-raiser against Arsenal are on the floor. But a new £200m strikeforce, all of whom have settled “extremely well” one insider insisted, has given supporters hope there will be an end to their suffering.
Should United enjoy a markedly more successful season this time around – judging success at modern-day United is open to interpretation – the group’s mood will have also played its part. It is certainly a far cry from staring into the Bilbao abyss.