Can Man Utd’s unexpected new coach turn Ruben Amorim players into ‘mad dogs’?
Can Man Utd’s unexpected new coach turn Ruben Amorim players into ‘mad dogs’?
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Manchester United have hired athletics guru Harry Marra as they seek to sharpen up the players’ fitness and sprinting technique. The football world wasn’t ready for Sir Clive Woodward when he joined Southampton as performance director in 2005. Two years after masterminding England’s Rugby World Cup glory, Woodward arrived at St Mary’s to much ridicule, summed up by a newspaper cartoon which depicted two players lifting up striker Peter Crouch like a second row catching a rugby lineout.
![[Amorim marshalls training from the centre of the pitch]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/11/20/16/2185450736.jpg)
Woodward later said, on seeing the cartoon: “My immediate thought was, ‘Can you do that? Can you actually lift someone up?’”. New ideas weren’t particularly welcome inside the game’s conformist culture, let alone wacky ones, and Woodward didn’t last long in the job, He clashed with Southampton manager Harry Redknapp, and his grand plan to eventually become a key player at the Football Association never materialised.
![[Mo Bobat, pictured in charge of England Cricket U19s, now works at Derby County]](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2019/11/19/18/gettyimages-821849298-1.jpg)
Yet football today is more open-minded to outside influence. Coaches from rugby, tennis and cricket have all switched over to the more lucrative world of football in recent years, and it was intriguing when news broke on Wednesday of Manchester United’s latest hire, the athletics guru Harry Marra. The 78-year-old American is considered one of the outstanding coaches in the history of track and field, and is best known for helping US decathlete Ashton Eaton to two Olympic gold medals.
![[Ruben Amorim has plenty of problems to solve at Old Trafford]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/20/11/5685fb438ce16296d805a63fb42b29efY29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzM3NDU0NzQ2-2.78738895.jpg)
“Even with the best starting XI on the planet, without running, they will not win anything,” Amorim said about his players in December. “It’s very clear. If you want to win the Premier League, you have to run like mad dogs. If not, we are not going to do it, that is clear.”.
