Man­ches­ter Unit­ed hired Ruben Amor­im on Fri­day, gam­bling on a young man­ag­er un­proven in Eu­rope’s top leagues to turn around the for­tunes of the fad­ing Eng­lish pow­er.

At age 39, Amor­im, who has joined from Por­tuguese cham­pi­on Sport­ing Lis­bon, will be the youngest per­son to coach Unit­ed since the 1960s and the sixth per­ma­nent man­ag­er since the re­tire­ment of Alex Fer­gu­son in 2013.

Amor­im will take charge on No­vem­ber 11, af­ter com­plet­ing his com­mit­ments to Sport­ing, and has signed a con­tract un­til June 2027, with Unit­ed hav­ing an op­tion of an ad­di­tion­al year.

“Ruben is one of the most ex­cit­ing and high­ly rat­ed young coach­es in Eu­ro­pean foot­ball,” Unit­ed said.

Unit­ed, the record 20-time Eng­lish cham­pi­on, hasn’t won the Pre­mier League since Fer­gu­son’s fi­nal sea­son in charge. Amor­im’s task will be to re­vive the glo­ries of a club that has fall­en way be­hind the best in Eng­land and Eu­rope — some­thing that has been be­yond the likes of Louis van Gaal, Jose Mour­in­ho and most re­cent­ly Erik ten Hag, who was fired on Mon­day.

Unit­ed is cur­rent­ly in 14th place in the 20-team Pre­mier League, hav­ing lost four of its first nine games.

Amor­im, a for­mer Por­tu­gal mid­field­er who spent the ma­jor­i­ty of his club ca­reer at Ben­fi­ca, joins af­ter Unit­ed paid 11 mil­lion eu­ros ($12 mil­lion) to re­lease him from his con­tract at Sport­ing, which he led to two Por­tuguese ti­tles in four full sea­sons in charge.

Sport­ing al­so said in a state­ment it will re­ceive around an ex­tra 1.66 mil­lion eu­ros ($1.8 mil­lion) be­cause of con­trac­tu­al rea­sons and com­mis­sions.

Amor­im has on­ly worked in Por­tu­gal and has no ex­pe­ri­ence of man­ag­ing some of the game’s top play­ers un­der the con­stant glare of the world’s me­dia.

“He comes from a big club in Por­tu­gal,” Unit­ed de­fend­er Dio­go Dalot said of Amor­im on British broad­cast­er Sky Sports, “but I al­ways say it al­most quadru­ples the amount of in­ten­si­ty, the amount of pres­sure (at Unit­ed).”

Amor­im end­ed Sport­ing’s 19-year ti­tle drought in the Por­tuguese league in 2021 to end the dom­i­nance of ri­vals Ben­fi­ca and Por­to, and won the League Cup that year, too, in his first sea­son in charge.

Sport­ing al­so won the league last sea­son and has won all nine of its league games in this cam­paign, bol­ster­ing Amor­im’s sta­tus as a bur­geon­ing coach­ing prospect. In his on­ly oth­er top-flight role, at Bra­ga, he won the League Cup in a stint last­ing less than a sea­son.

Amor­im will fin­ish his time at Sport­ing with a game against Es­trela da Amado­ra on Fri­day, at home to Man­ches­ter City in the Cham­pi­ons League on Tues­day and with a trip to Bra­ga on Nov. 10.

In the mean­time, Ru­ud van Nis­tel­rooy will stay in in­ter­im con­trol of Unit­ed, tak­ing charge of three games be­fore the in­ter­na­tion­al break, which are all at home: against Chelsea and Leices­ter in the Pre­mier League ei­ther side of a Eu­ropa League match against PAOK.

Amor­im’s first game with Unit­ed will be away to Ip­swich on Nov. 24.

He re­port­ed­ly held talks with West Ham last sea­son be­fore the Lon­don team hired Julen Lopetegui, and was al­so linked with re­plac­ing Ju­r­gen Klopp at Liv­er­pool be­fore Arne Slot was ap­point­ed.

Now, he is tak­ing charge of one of the world’s most sto­ried clubs, which has been in de­cline for the past decade and is in a pe­ri­od of up­heaval fol­low­ing the ar­rival of a new soc­cer-fo­cused lead­er­ship team front­ed by British bil­lion­aire Jim Rat­cliffe.

Rat­cliffe will hope he has signed the lat­est coach­ing gem, with Amor­im the youngest Unit­ed man­ag­er since a 31-year-old Wilf McGuin­ness took charge in 1969.

Fol­low­ing on from the ap­point­ment of Ten Hag, who ar­rived from the Dutch league, it con­tin­ues Unit­ed’s shift from hir­ing high-pro­file coach­es such as Van Gaal and Mour­in­ho.

The Pre­mier League now has four man­agers in their 30s, with Amor­im join­ing Brighton’s Fabi­an Hurzel­er (31), Ip­swich’s Kier­an McKen­na (38) and Southamp­ton’s Rus­sell Mar­tin (38). —(AP)

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Sto­ry by STEVE DOU­GLAS | As­so­ci­at­ed Press