Ruben Amorim pictured at Man Utd as Sporting Lisbon boss closes on Old Trafford job

Perhaps it was written in the stars. Perhaps it was always meant to be.

is in pole position to replace as manager. And perhaps he was always destined to be the main man at Old Trafford.

who has done outstanding work at Sporting Lisbon since they paid what was then an eye-watering sum to snatch him from Braga after mere months as a senior head coach, is no stranger to Old Trafford, nor even United's Carrington Training complex.

After retiring from football and cancelling his Benfica contract, Amorim began a postgraduate degree at the University of Lisbon's Faculty of Human Kinetics and duly spent time with at the club six and a half years ago. At the time, Mourinho was a coordinator and lecturer on the High Performance Coaching course. He duly chose the top students to intern with him and his coaching staff. With hindsight, Amorim was unsurprisingly one of the three chosen.

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This internship came the week after United reached the final with a 2-1 win over Hotspur in their semi-final at Wembley, followed by a victory of the same scoreline against at Old Trafford in the .

Amorim, who never played for or worked with Mourinho during his coaching career, and the now-Fenerbahce boss happily posed for a photograph inside one of the office at Carrington.

"I like United because Mourinho is my role model," said Amorim back in November 2017. "There are coaches who have a way of watching the game that I like, like Guardiola. But for me, the role model is Mourinho because I watch the ball in a way that's more similar to Mister Mourinho."

"He analyses the opponents very well and sets his team up, not just with a certain style of play but thinking a lot about how to adapt to win. And I'm a bit like that."

At Sporting, like Mourinho at Porto 20-plus years ago, Amorim has won titles and grown his reputation. He has ruthlessly cut old heads, taken young players and turned them into stars, and sold for big money.

Like his mentor, he may well now be his turn to make his way to the Premier League. Perhaps he will be able to have a similar impact too.

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