Ruben Amorim Faces Manchester United for the First Time After His Sacking

Ruben Amorim stood on the opposite touchline in Wroclaw, Poland, on Saturday and watched his new club put four goals past the one that removed him from his job seven months earlier. AC Milan beat Manchester United 4-2 in both sides’ final pre-season friendly, and it marked the first time Amorim had faced his old team after United sacked him in January.

The result could easily have read as a statement. Amorim chose not to treat it as one.

“Since I signed with Milan, I haven’t felt anything about Manchester United,” Amorim said after the win. “I’m just proud to have been at Manchester United, and I still love Manchester United. But after signing with Milan, I don’t feel anything negative about anything because I’m very happy.”

He added a simpler explanation for why the scoreline mattered to him on a personal level, separate from any history with United. “I wanted to win a game in pre-season to give our fans a good image,” he said.

The manager who ended Rashford’s United career, twice

Amorim’s dismissal ended a 14-month reign that began when he succeeded Erik ten Hag in November 2024. He won only 24 of his 63 games in charge across all competitions, a rate of 38.1 percent that stood as the worst of any United manager in the years after Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement, aside from Ralf Rangnick’s brief interim spell. United moved to remove him in January, less than a day after Amorim had held a news conference following a 1-1 draw with Leeds United in which he urged the club’s hierarchy to “do your jobs.”

One of the more contested legacies of that reign traveled to Wroclaw with United on Saturday. Marcus Rashford had fallen out of favor under both ten Hag and Amorim, and Rashford’s path out of Old Trafford began in Amorim’s time in charge, first on loan to Aston Villa and then to Barcelona. His last Premier League appearance for United had come back in December 2024.

Barcelona chose not to activate their £26m option to buy Rashford permanently this summer, which brought him back to Old Trafford this pre-season under Amorim’s successor, Michael Carrick. Rashford came off the bench in the 61st minute against Milan for his first United appearance in 20 months, facing the very manager who had pushed him out the door.

Carrick has made clear he wants Rashford involved. “We have got a full squad this week in Dublin. We fly straight there and have a few days where we have the whole group back together. Marcus is part of that,” Carrick said before the squad traveled for an earlier stage of pre-season. Carrick was Old Trafford’s captain in 2016 when an 18-year-old Rashford came off the bench to score a brace on his debut against FC Midtjylland, and later worked as a coach under both Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer while Rashford was a key part of the squad. Few figures at the club understand him better.

A game that started well for United before it fell apart

United had the perfect start on the pitch. Harry Maguire headed in from a Bruno Fernandes corner inside the first two minutes, and Amad Diallo almost doubled the lead soon after. For a few minutes it looked like Amorim’s return to face his old side would end in defeat for Milan.

Milan settled and worked their way back into the game. Goncalo Ramos teed up Samuel Chukwueze for the equalizer before the break, and Fernandes then missed a firmly struck penalty that would have put United back in front at halftime. Patrick Dorgu restored the lead early in the second half after pouncing on a loose pass from Filippo Terracciano, but Milan responded twice more. Alphadjo Cisse leveled it, Ramos headed in a second goal from another Chukwueze cross, and Ruben Loftus-Cheek made it four with a run down the right that exposed United’s defense repeatedly in the closing stages.

Manchester United head coach Michael Carrick did not try to explain away the result. “We’re disappointed with it. We didn’t play well today,” Carrick said. “There are reasons for that and we need to improve. Some of the boys were playing their first minutes. Different reasons, but no excuses. We didn’t play very well.”

Carrick pointed to the calendar as some reassurance. “Overall, we are ready for next week. A lot of the boys will be better off for the minutes. We’ve done a lot of work on the training pitch, the performances in the games have been pretty good. We’re still in good spirits going into next week,” he said. “We’ve got a good squad. There are decisions to be made. We’ve got another week’s training to get ready for next week. There’s a whole different feeling when it’s the first league game of the season. We will be there.”

Rashford’s reintegration continues

Rashford’s cameo against Milan came alongside two other returning faces. Lisandro Martinez and Kobbie Mainoo also came off the bench as they continue working back from World Cup exertions and injury respectively. None of the three could turn the tide against a Milan side that had found its rhythm through Chukwueze’s work down United’s right flank.

Rashford’s return has divided opinion among United’s own supporters, with some pointing to his 87 Premier League goals in 287 appearances for the club and the different, more direct profile he offers alongside Matheus Cunha on the left, and others still unconvinced after a barren run of form before his loan exits. Carrick’s own history with the forward, going back to that 2016 debut, gives him a case few of his predecessors could make for getting the best out of him again.

Benjamin Sesko has yet to feature in pre-season while he recovers from injury, and question marks remain over Patrick Dorgu’s best position, which adds to the pressure on United to work out quickly what version of Rashford they have back.

United had considered adding another forward option this summer before Rashford’s return became likely, and his arrival back in the squad changes that calculation. At 87 goals in 287 Premier League appearances for the club, he remains one of the most productive academy products of his generation at Old Trafford, even accounting for the stretch of form that preceded his exit. Whether he can reach the level he showed after the 2022 World Cup again, before things soured under ten Hag and then Amorim, is the question Carrick now has to answer in real time rather than from the touchline of a loan club.

A defeat that raises questions before the season starts

United’s Premier League opener at Hull is less than a week away, and the manner of the loss to Milan left obvious questions unanswered. Andrey Santos has emerged as a genuine asset for United this pre-season, and the midfield built around new arrival Youri Tielemans still shows promise even as it settles. But this result was a reminder that other parts of the squad remain unfinished business.

Martinez, Mainoo and Rashford are all working back toward full fitness, which goes some way to explaining United’s defensive fragility against Milan. What is harder to explain away is the amount of space United gave up down their own right side, repeatedly, against a front line led by a manager who knows exactly how this club is built. He built parts of it himself.

Carrick’s system is settled heading into the new season, and he continues to work on the patterns in training. Whether Luke Shaw can be relied upon as heavily as he was the previous season remains an open question, as does whether United still need to add another midfielder before the market closes. Those are the kind of questions a pre-season defeat in Poland cannot answer. Only the Premier League season, starting at Hull, will do that.

Amorim’s new life at Milan

For Amorim, Saturday was less about tactics than about closing a chapter. He took over at Milan in June, six months after his United exit, walking into a club that had gone through its own reset at the end of the previous season. Saturday’s friendly was his first competitive setting against the club that sacked him, and he needed four attempts in pre-season to record his first win as Milan boss. It arrived against the team most people expected to define this particular fixture.

He was careful afterward not to present it as vindication. His words leaned on respect for what came before and contentment in what comes next, not on proving a point to anyone at Old Trafford. For a manager whose time at United ended with a public plea to his own bosses and a sacking within a day of it, the calm of his answers on Saturday said as much as the scoreline did.

United, meanwhile, have a week to find answers of their own, with Rashford’s reintegration and Amorim’s old midfield puzzle both still unresolved, before the games start counting.