This Thursday, coach Jose Mourinho classified Arthur Jorge, who has died aged 78, as “highly respected” in football, believing that the country does not value the legacy of the former coach and player enough.
“Mister” will always command great respect from me. A man of great class, a great player, but an elite coach, one of the most outstanding in the history of Portuguese football. This is how I want to remember him. “, he said in a statement to RTP.
Mourinho, a European champion with Porto in 2004 after Arthur Jorge succeeded him at the Dragons in 1987, praised both his CV and his personal culture.
“What the coach did with Porto is the same as what I did with Porto. Then the coach became the first to win outside of Portugal. Then I left. I was outside of Portugal for 20 years, and different generations have different careers. I look at a coach and the first thing that comes to mind regarding his career and abilities is history. Who was the European champion in Portugal? He was. This is a historical event,” he emphasized.
The former Roma coach understands that Arthur Jorge, “a great gentleman, a gentleman of a unique class”, was “certainly the first cultural coach in Portugal”, recalling his interest in “culture, books and learning”.
He said he met Arthur Jorge before he became head coach, “for a few hours at his home in the Algarve”, in a conversation about the “experience”, maintaining contact that later extended to his wife and children due to illness. which killed him: “I feel privileged by the few contacts we had.”
Mourinho found that nowadays access to information is simple and automatic, whereas “knowledge” in the days of Arthur Jorge, who graduated from Leipzig, in the former Democratic Republic of Germany, “was very difficult to achieve” in the country.
“He is a coach who belongs to all of us. He is part of the history of Portuguese football. The country has forgotten that there is a history of our sport that we could do more to remember. link,” he added.
Arthur Jorge, a former footballer, died this Thursday at the age of 78 after a coaching career of more than two decades, winning Porto’s first European Cup, with whom he became national champion three times.
He also won the French title with Paris Saint-Germain and the Saudi title with Al Hilal as coach. A career that he started after being a striker, he played 16 matches.
As a footballer, he played for such clubs as Porto, Academica, where he combined sports with the study of German philology, Benfica, winning four league titles and two Portuguese cups, and Belenenses, ending his career in North America club. Rochester Lancers.
Arthur Jorge, born in Porto on February 13, 1946, also coached the Portuguese national team twice – Switzerland and Cameroon.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
I’m Dave Martin, and I’m an experienced journalist working in the news industry. As a part of my work, I write for 24 News Reporters, covering mostly sports-related topics. With more than 5 years of experience as a journalist, I have written numerous articles on various topics to provide accurate information to readers.