Ruben Amorim disagrees with Erik ten Hag’s assessment on “soft” Manchester United players

Manchester United boss Ruben Amorim was asked about Erik ten Hag’s recent comments about the modern-day players being “soft”.

Erik ten Hag was sacked from Manchester United earlier this season and Ruben Amorim came in as his replacement in the dug-out.

The Dutchman took time to reflect on his time at Old Trafford in an interview this week and also spoke about some of the difficulties of modern-day management.

One of the issues he spoke about was the current generation of footballers finding it “difficult to deal with criticism”.

“This generation for example they usually finds it difficult to deal with criticism. Criticism really gets to them”, Ten Hag explained.

“The generation that I grew up in had much thicker skin. You could be much more direct.”

Ten Hag had notable conflicts with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Jadon Sancho and Raphaël Varane during his time at the club.

Amorim disagrees with Ten Hag about soft United players

These comments were brought up to Amorim during his pre-match press conference on Friday afternoon ahead of United’s FA Cup clash against Fulham.

The Portuguese manager offered a different viewpoint, speaking about the social media pressures in the modern-day and explained that players need help to deal with that, rather than being labelled as soft.

“I think it is completely different for the players nowadays. Before, it was just two newspapers and nothing more,” he responded.

“With social media, it is completely different, they are so focused on social media – you cannot go to social media without seeing the news or a photo, or if you read something bad you focus on that.

“You can have like 100 good things and then one bad thing, and you focus on the one bad thing. I think it’s really hard for them. You can call it soft but they have that access to criticism, what people think. That is really, really hard to deal with.

“They need help to deal with that. It is modern football and they have to be prepared for that.”

Amorim’s man-management can be useful at United

One of the main positives mentioned about Amorim before he joined the club was his man-management style.

Of course, it isn’t something that fans will be able to immediately notice, or something that can be built with the players over a matter of months, but it is still something that could be a positive.

Amorim is still learning about the attention United generate and he has made some slip-ups in his press conferences.

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But it will be an interesting aspect to see develop over the long-term, especially after a pre-season with the squad.

Sporting players were devastated when he left. That wasn’t just because they were losing a good manager, but also a good person, and that could end up being just as important at Old Trafford.

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