Jorginho will be a manager one day, according to Mikel Arteta. “If he wants to … he has every quality to do so,” the Arsenal manager says, of the player he describes as “one of the most intelligent I have coached”. For now, though, the midfield metronome will have to make do with the role of unofficial assistant coach as Arsenal seek to go one step further than last season and win the Premier League.
When the club signed Jorginho from Chelsea in January for an initial £10m, there were eyebrows raised, not least from the player himself, mainly because of the speed of the deal. Arsenal had been trying to sign Moisés Caicedo from Brighton and failed. So they made a sharp sidestep and added Jorginho, who had six months remaining on his contract.
There did not appear to be a ready-made space for him in Arsenal’s best XI and the feeling would persist after this summer when they spent massive money on Declan Rice and Kai Havertz. Yet the thinking was clear. Jorginho would provide a proven option, somebody to raise the bar and, moreover, a veteran who had won the biggest prizes – the Champions League with Chelsea, the European Championship with Italy – and could help a young Arsenal team to do likewise.
It did not work out in the league, the doom of Arsenal’s title challenge confirmed in the third-last game of the season when they lost 3-0 to Brighton at the Emirates. Yet going into the same fixture on Sunday, hopes are once again stirring, Arsenal making sure-footed strides. Jorginho’s input will be fundamental.
“What I try to bring is always this experience [of winning trophies] – not just on the pitch but off it, helping to take care of details, in life as well; speaking out to the boys when I see some things,” the 31-year-old says.
“It’s to try to make everyone better. If you improve 1%, 2%, 3% … if I can help with that, you add to the team and you are more close to winning.”
Jorginho was a Coppa Italia winner with Napoli in 2014 and a Europa League victor with Chelsea in 2019, when they beat Arsenal in the final. But everything happened for him in 2021 – and at breakneck pace. There was the Champions League glory with Chelsea, then more of the same with Italy at the Euros when his only blot, missing a shootout penalty to win the final against England, was overlooked when his now Arsenal teammate, Bukayo Saka, blew the decisive kick.
In August of that year, Jorginho won the European Super Cup with Chelsea while he was also named as the Uefa men’s player of the year. In late November, he came third in the Ballon d’Or vote. Early the following year, he won the Club World Cup.
“It was a bit insane for me, I did not see it coming,” he says. “It was just too much, a lot in a row. I didn’t have the time to stop myself and analyse and realise.”
It made him proud, he says; vindicating all of the hard work. It taught him that anything is possible. But he pushes back against the notion that it changed or even fortified him because he has long been the same person; fiercely driven, a student of the game. Or at least he has been since he left his native Brazil at 15 to join Verona in Italy and developed a passion for tactics.
“In Brazil, back in the day, it was the more technical stuff I loved,” he says. “Then coming to Italy and learning the tactical stuff … that was the moment I started to see the difference. How much you can improve, how many games it can make you win.”
Jorginho was not on the pitch at Aston Villa last Saturday when Arsenal lost 1-0 to snap a six-game winning streak. Nor was Arteta in the dugout as he served a touchline ban. But it was hard to ignore Jorginho in the substitutes’ warm-up area, pointing this way and that, offering constant instruction. During a break in play, the Arsenal goalkeeper, David Raya, came to him for a tactical chat rather than go to the bench. It looked as though Jorginho was coaching the team.
“There was a ball David tried to play on the right side and I told him to play on the left because that’s what we trained before,” Jorginho says. “I called to him and we couldn’t hear each other properly and then he came over to have this chat and clear it up.
“It’s something that comes naturally to me when Mikel is there or when he’s not there. Even more when he’s not there. It was just me trying to support the boys. Arsenal is always growing through the years since Mikel arrived … it’s just increasing and increasing. We still have a lot of room to improve and learn but we are on the right path.”
Jorginho has never been particularly fast or physical but he makes the gains through his reading of the game. “One of my biggest strengths is my brain,” he says, and Arteta brooks no argument with his assessment of him.
“He’s someone who really takes care of people, he makes them better,” Arteta says. “The detail that he can go into, the understanding of what is happening live in the game, not just on video, how he can correct it and how he can attract the attention of his teammates to listen to him and do what he is telling them to do … it is very impressive.”
