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Rui Faria: Former assistant manager sends cryptic message to Ineos
Jan 10 2026 10:16 · By onefootball.com · 43 Reads
Former Manchester United assistant Rui Faria has had some choice words for his former employers.
The Portuguese coach spent 17 years working with Jose Mourinho.
He enjoyed immense success with the world-famous coach at FC Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan and Real Madrid.
Rui Faria moved to Old Trafford in 2016 when Jose Mourinho was appointed manager and became the assistant manager of the club.
He left in the summer of 2018 and became manager of Al-Duhail in 2019.
United made the news this week when they sacked Ruben Amorim on Monday.
Whilst not naming the club directly, Rui Faria seemed to aim a barbed dig at United’s current owners, Ineos.
The 50-year-old posted on Instagram, “a great club’s philosophy used to be about silverware. Coaches were hired for their winning streaks in order to achieve the club objectives. Today, coaches are often hired according to their willingness to accept a club’s business plan.”
He continued, “coaches are led to believe they’re at the helm of a sports project in which they can manage their own decision-making while influencing different departments in order to achieve sporting success. The club’s business plan, however, is essentially about numbers – with each department set up to achieve its own objectives, contesting any coaching decision that could hinder its own targets – regardless of on-field results.”
The former assistant coach finished by asserting, “a winning football team is more than the sum of departmental parts and the setting of department-by-department objectives often comes at the cost of points and silverware won. Yet the coach still remains the face of an unsuccessful project – even when their power is reduced to almost nothing!”.
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Rui Faria (@ruifaria_rf)
The Portuguese was most likely standing up for his compatriot despite not naming Amorim or Manchester United as a club.
Nonetheless, he raises an interesting point about the role of modern-day coaches and this was clearly a source of major tension between Amorim and director of football Jason Wilcox , which contributed hugely to his sacking. Featured image Michael Regan via Getty Images
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