Jorge Jesus has become a polarizing figure in the world of football. With José Mourinho struggling in Chelsea and Nuno Espiríto Santo just fired from Valência, Jesus is the Portuguese coach of the moment
He doesn’t make miracles, but sometimes it looks like he can. Portuguese coach Jorge Jesus, now training Sporting Clube de Portugal after many years and titles with its main rival Sport Lisboa and Benfica, is the man of the moment in Portuguese football and a rising star in Europe.
Different from José Mourinho, Pep Guardiola or Luis Henrique, Jesus is not a young, well-educated coach. It took him many years in smaller clubs to get to a top team in Portugal. He was already 54 when he started training Benfica. In six years managing the Portuguese ‘reds’, he won three national championships and led the team to two Europa League finals. He brought back Benfica’s greatness after many years of bad results for the club, and now he wants to do the same with Sporting – the season is almost halfway done and Sporting is first in the championship, something that hasn’t happened for many years.
Often described by the media as being extremely competitive, a perfectionist and slightly arrogant, Jorge Jesus talks to CLOSER about his career, his personal life, Chinese football and more. More than any club, he confesses his biggest passion is football, purely football.
How do you deal with fame?
I deal with it well because I take refuge in my routine, in my work and in my space. At Sporting I now spend a lot of time at the academy [of Alcochete] and from there I go home, or when I’m not home I’m always connected to a small group of friends, with whom I have dinner or lunch. I don’t break this pattern much.
Have you ever had problems?
On the contrary. The problems are more about the emotions people have with my move from Benfica to Sporting. Those aged under 15, who have grown up seeing me at Benfica, and the younger ones, aged six, seven, eight, come to me and ask: “Why did you change to Sporting?” with such genuine emotion, I don’t know how to reply. If they were adults it would be easier. But I try to answer … and what is curious is that some children ask me in tears. I didn’t know that my move to another club would stir such feelings in some people, people who liked Benfica and who liked me.
You read a lot. Are you aware of what is being said by the critics?
No. Neither the positive nor the negative. I try to take refuge in my world.
And when the criticism goes beyond the professional sphere? For example, when your way of speaking is commented on?
We all make mistakes with language. But I know I have to take some care and increasingly I have to take more. I just don’t value these aspects very much. I rather value my training as a coach, or rather, what I know how to do, the faculties that I have to develop and evolve in the sense of creating my ideas. That’s what gives me comfort, safety. If I don’t pronounce a sentence in English well … I didn’t study English, nor am I a Portuguese teacher! Look, I am a genuine person, no one is briefing me, I speak my mind. The good and bad. There are some things I should not have said, but anyway, I am not going to change now.
Are you superstitious?
All sportsmen are superstitious. As a player I was too, little things, like always playing in the same shorts, or with those leggings … As a coach, I’m not superstitious. I believe in the work and the people who work with me. Although there is always a little bit…
Who is the best player you’ve ever trained?
Pablo Aimar.
And who has given you a hard time, like a complicated child?
He had a strong personality and I was always telling him he had to change, he had to do this, he had to do that … It was David Luiz.
Were there any players who really didn’t work out?
Throughout my career there were several players who I thought deserved to be lucky and whom I couldn’t help as much as I would have liked to. Yannick Djalo, was a great kid. Kardec, Cesar Peixoto, three players with whom I had a very good relationship. They were wonderful and I thought they deserved to be lucky and never managed to make it, in spite of their strengths.
You are famous for your creations. Tell us about a player you “invented” and how that works.
There are three aspects: physical, technical and tactical. Now there are many coaches trying to do what I did, but it takes more than getting a player to play a position. You have to see if the player is able to do so. And it all starts with the physical. A player who was completely transformed, from a wing to a midfield organiser was Enzo Pérez. It is most difficult because you have to make someone believe they can take on that position.
Will the coach ever be more important than the players?
You can have 11 good players, but if you do not have a good coach, you won’t win. Because 11 good players each think in their own heads. What matters is having a coach who knows how to synergize the thinking of the team, depending on the individual quality of the players. In my opinion, in a successful team, 60 percent is the coach.
Are there any coaches in I Liga who are your friends?
I prefer to see things in reverse: I think no one is my enemy. Every week we are in competition. One has to defend his club and how he does it means people think that they are enemies. It’s not true. They’re opponents. André Villas-Boas, Vítor Pereira, today we are great friends. But when they were defending their teams and I was defending mine, each one had to do it the most effective way. Today I have nothing against Rui Vitória or Lopetegui, only that they are coaches of my rivals and I have to defend my team.
Some of the names you mentioned are now working abroad. Is there one in particular who is special?
Portuguese will always have special careers because we’re better than others. But in all areas, not only in training: in the organization outside training, game strategy, tactics of the game, the way we are on the bench and how we see what is happening in the game …Portuguese coaches are the best in the world, there is no doubt!
Why do you think that?
Because the difficulties have made us better than others. The necessity of having to learn the many areas of football has opened up horizons that, Brazilian coaches for example, don’t have. As they have (always) had the best players in the world, they were never forced to develop in the area of training. And today they have been exceeded; they are 20 years behind us.
What do you foresee, in terms of you career?
I don’t know, the coach’s career is day-to-day. When asked if I have ambition to train outside Portugal, not really. Only if there is a project that allows me to be a champion in the country where I am, and also be European champion. But this is how I feel at this moment. Maybe in a year or two, I’ll think differently. You have to choose based on two things: the sport and the finances. And maybe in a few years I will choose the latter, to go to Qatar, to Saudi, to China, because they pay what others do not pay.
Speaking of China, do you follow Asian football?
Not much. I watch Arab football, because of Al-Jazeera, and I like to always have an eye on the players (they may grow tired of winning so many dollars and want to return to Europe) but otherwise I don’t have much knowledge of what goes on over in the East, because we have no information.
But Sporting is launching partnerships for the establishment of various academies in China. Does Asian football have interesting aspects?
It does. Typically they are fast players and that’s half the job done in football today. What they have most difficulty with is the tactical and technical issues, because it has to do with training. If you don’t have a good coach, you can’t develop. And then those big countries (population wise) will begin to create quality coaches, and China is doing this, issuing books about football in primary school, they are trying to put technicians in the clubs. Within a few years they will be organizing a World Championship and are already preparing for it. To do this, they have to recruit foreign coaches. That is the way to train great players. But the skills of Asian footballers are great because they are based on speed.
Let’s talk about Sporting. Is this stage at Sporting, compared to Benfica, easier because you have grown as a coach?
The difficulty is the same, because when I arrived at Benfica, Benfica had also not won anything for years. Sporting has won the Cup, Benfica not even that. To win titles, it’s not enough to only be a field coach. Today, to be a Benfica, Sporting or FC Porto coach, you have to have comprehensive global knowledge beyond the training; otherwise you can’t achieve your goals.
Does Sporting have what it takes to be champion?
At this moment in time it has depth, it has the range in this first third of the championship – and with a title already earned [Supertaça] – to develop a whole set of ideas, a methodology that we have fine-tuned. It has reached a refining point, but not a point of affirmation. Yet we are not a team that can be affirmed. There is still a lot of growing to do.
If it were up to you, would you have continued in Benfica?
I don’t know…
How do you feel, after six years at Luz, ahead of the legal offensive of Benfica?
It has changed the way I look at things with feeling and passion. This gives me more and more fuel, more motivation to defend my employer, which is Sporting. It’s what I do with everyone, but in this case even more because I don’t deserve what they did to me. I’m not talking about leaving Benfica, but about what happened after leaving Benfica, this whole wave of lying communications to put Benfica supporters against me. I’m at Sporting, body and soul, as I’d be at any club where I work. Because my priority is not the name of the club; what makes me move, love and dedicate myself, is called football. It was football that formed me as a man, football that helped me to have a better family life than perhaps I would have had in another line of work. There is no club more important than football.
Photo: Branislav Simoncik. Styling:Jan Kralicek – for GQ Portugal magazine
On the cover of GQ Portugal
Jorge Jesus is hardly a fashionable man. The attention he pays to his hair is well known, but other than that he’s not an ‘Armani suit’ kind of coach, like say, Pep Guardiola. With this is mind, the Portuguese edition of GQ magazine invited Jesus for a very special photo shoot, interviewing him and featuring him on the cover of their November issue, with the suggestive title “Nobody F*cks With Jesus”. The issue was a big success. CLOSER would like to give a special thanks to GQ Portugal for allowing us to republish some of the great images from the photo shoot with Jorge Jesus.
