Jorge Jesus Takes Over as Portugal Coach After World Cup Exit
Jorge Jesus has been handed the Portugal job, stepping into the role vacated by Roberto Martinez after the country’s latest World Cup disappointment.
Martinez’s tenure, which began at the start of 2023, ended with a last-16 exit to Spain on Monday. For a nation that has not seen a World Cup semi-final since 2006, that was the breaking point.
Into that void walks a 71-year-old serial winner whose career has rarely been quiet.
A restless career, a decorated CV
Jesus has been on the touchline for 36 years, a nomadic, combustible presence who has left fingerprints on almost every team he has managed. In Portugal, he is synonymous with Benfica, where he enjoyed two separate spells and collected three league titles, and with Sporting CP, the move across Lisbon in 2015 that shook the country.
His success has never been confined to home. In Brazil, he turned Flamengo into a juggernaut, lifting the league title and enhancing his reputation in one of football’s most demanding environments. In Saudi Arabia, he became a dominant force again, winning the league with both Al Hilal and Al Nassr.
Across that journey, the numbers are stark: 25 trophies, won in different cultures, under different pressures, with very little room for excuses.
Ronaldo, Al Nassr and a reunion of sorts
Jesus’s most recent chapter came in the Saudi Pro League. Across the last three seasons he has lived the high-intensity, high-profile life of a coach in a league transformed by money and star power.
Before joining Al Nassr last summer, he made it clear why he accepted the role. Coaching Cristiano Ronaldo, he said, was an invitation he “could not refuse.” Together, they ended a seven-year title drought at the Riyadh club, delivering the league and restoring Al Nassr’s status as champions before Jesus departed at the end of the 2025-26 season. Ange Postecoglou has since stepped into that job.
Now Jesus returns to work in the same national colours Ronaldo defined for two decades, but without the country’s greatest player on the pitch.
Ronaldo, owner of a world-record 146 international goals in 233 Portugal appearances, confirmed earlier this month that he will not play at another World Cup. His decision closes an era just as Portugal prepare to co-host the 2030 tournament with Spain and Morocco, with Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay staging the opening matches.
The next World Cup will be on home soil, in part. Ronaldo will not be there. Jesus will.
Portugal’s dilemma and Jesus’s mandate
Portugal’s recent honours list still glitters: European champions in 2016, Nations League winners in 2019 and again in 2025. Yet the World Cup continues to elude them when it matters most. The sense of a golden generation never quite cracking the biggest stage hangs over this appointment.
Jesus arrives with a reputation for aggressive, front-foot football, for teams that press, swarm and attack in numbers. His sides have rarely been dull. His touchline persona, all animation and confrontation, will stand in sharp contrast to Martinez’s cooler exterior.
He has already brushed close to another of international football’s giants. In March 2025, The Athletic reported that Jesus was among the leading contenders to take over Brazil, alongside Carlo Ancelotti. Ancelotti ultimately took that job after leaving Real Madrid in May. Portugal, instead, now claim the veteran coach many in Brazil viewed as a serious option.
A familiar fire for a defining cycle
From Benfica to Sporting CP, from Flamengo to Al Hilal and Al Nassr, Jesus has thrived amid rivalry and expectation. He walked out on Benfica to join their fiercest domestic rivals. He left one Saudi powerhouse for another in Riyadh. He has rarely chosen the easy path.
Now comes his hardest assignment: turning a talented, post-Ronaldo Portugal into a World Cup force again, with the world coming to their doorstep in 2030.
There will be no hiding place. Only the promise of one last, defining act in a career built on walking straight into the heat.
