Jorge Luis Dely Valdés (born March 12, 1967) is a Panamanian former

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby lea ...

who played as a forward. He is a twin brother of Julio Dely Valdés and younger brother of Armando Dely Valdés.

Club career

Born in Colon, Dely Valdés began his professional career in 1989 in Argentina with Deportivo Paraguayo of Argentina, where he scored 28 goals. A move to El Porvenir for the 1990 season did not prove successful, as a leg injury kept him out most of the season, and he moved to Nacional of Uruguay the next season, where he won the Uruguayan Championship in 1992. In the next year, he won the Chilean Cup championship with

Unión Española Club Unión Española S.A.D.P. is a professional football club based in the Independencia neighborhood, commune of Santiago, Chile currently participating in the Primera División de Chile. History Foundation, Amateur Era and First seasons ...

. Dely Valdés then moved to the

Japan Football League The , also known as simply the JFL, is the 4th tier of the Japanese association football league system, positioned beneath the three divisions of the J.League. The league features fully professional teams that hold J.League 100 Year Plan club sta ...

, where he played with

Toshiba is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...

. In his first season, 1993, he led the Japan Football scoring table with 20 goals, and improved that in 1994, again leading the league with 34. Delys Valdés was transferred to Cerezo Osaka for the 1995 season, and continued his dominance, scoring 19 goals. In the subsequent season he moved to Tosu Futures, where he scored 24 goals. For the 1998 season, Dely Valdés was signed by a

club, Consadole Sapporo, looking to return to the first division; Jorge helped the team do just that, by scoring 40 goals in leading the team back. Dely Valdés remained with Sapporo in 1999, scoring 20 goals that season. He left them after the 1998 season. Dely Valdés returned to

CONCACAF The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, abbreviated as CONCACAF ( ; typeset for branding purposes since 2018 as Concacaf), is one of FIFA's six continental governing bodies for association football. Its 4 ...

following the 1999 J. League season to play in

Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a professional Association football, soccer league in North America and the highest level of the United States soccer league system. It comprises 30 teams, with 27 in the United States and 3 in Canada, and is sanc ...

for the

Colorado Rapids The Colorado Rapids are an American professional Association football, soccer club based in the Denver metropolitan area. The Rapids compete in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member of the Western Conference (MLS), Western Conference. Founded in ...

. Dely Valdés continued his scoring rate in the 1999 MLS season, registering 10 goals and 6 assists in 32 games for the Rapids. He continued to score in 2000, registering another 7 goals and 1 assist in 20 games, 13 starts, for the Rapids. He returned to Japan to play for

Omiya Ardija is a Japanese professional association football club based in Ōmiya-ku, Saitama, Ōmiya, Saitama Prefecture. Its "hometown" (as designated by the league) is shared with neighbours Urawa Red Diamonds. The team currently play in J2 League, the ...

alongside compatriot Alfredo Anderson and joined Kawasaki Frontale in 2003.

International career

Jorge was a very dangerous striker for the Panama national team for over a decade, playing 27 games with the team in the 1994, 1998, 2002 and 2006 World Cup Qualifying cycles. He made his debut in a May 1991 UNCAF Nations Cup match against

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, ...

and earned a total of 48 caps, scoring 19 goals. He represented his country at the

1995 1995 was designated as: * United Nations Year for Tolerance * World Year of Peoples' Commemoration of the Victims of the Second World War This was the first year that the Internet was entirely privatized, with the United States government ...

and 2001 UNCAF Nations Cups. In the Gold Cup of 2005, he scored two goals and led Panama to the final match against the United States. His final international was an October 2005

FIFA World Cup qualification The FIFA World Cup qualification is a set of competitive matches that a national association football team plays in order to qualify for one of the available berths at the final tournament of the men's FIFA World Cup. Qualifying tournaments ar ...

match against the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Managerial career

On August 8, 2014, he took over as manager at Tauro in his native Panama, a position he held until leaving on December 30, 2014 to join his brother Julio at Águila in El Salvador. He returned to Tauro in May 2015, only to be replaced by Rolando Palma in October 2015. As coach of U-20 Panama, he managed to write history for the country by helping the national team to win the first ever match in the

FIFA U-20 World Cup The FIFA U-20 World Cup is the biennial football world championship tournament for FIFA members' men's national teams with players under the age of 20. The competition has been staged every two years since the inaugural tournament in 1977 when i ...

, a 2–1 victory over Asian champions U-20 Saudi Arabia in 2019 FIFA U-20 World Cup and qualified to the round of sixteen for the first time ever in Panamanian history of the U-20 World Cup.

Career statistics

International

International goals :''Scores and results list Panama's goal tally first.''

Honours

Unión Española * Copa Chile:

1992 1992 was designated as International Space Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 – Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt replaces Javier Pérez de Cuéllar of Peru as United Nations Secretary-General. * January 6 ** The Republ ...

Panama * CONCACAF Gold Cup runner-up:

2005 2005 was designated as the International Year for Sport and Physical Education and the International Year of Microcredit. The beginning of 2005 also marked the end of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples, Internationa ...

Individual * CONCACAF Gold Cup Best XI (Honorable Mention):

References

External links

* * *
What Ever Happened To: Jorge Dely Valdés
– MLS Soccer
ferplei.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dely Valdes, Jorge 1967 births Living people Footballers from Colón, Panama Panamanian twins Men's association football forwards Panamanian men's footballers 20th-century Panamanian sportsmen Panama men's international footballers 2005 CONCACAF Gold Cup players Central Norte players Deportivo Paraguayo footballers Club El Porvenir footballers Club Nacional de Football players Unión Española footballers Hokkaido Consadole Sapporo players Cerezo Osaka players Sagan Tosu players Colorado Rapids players RB Omiya Ardija players Kawasaki Frontale players C.D. Árabe Unido players Panamanian expatriate men's footballers Expatriate men's footballers in Argentina Expatriate men's footballers in Uruguay Expatriate men's footballers in Chile Expatriate men's footballers in Japan Expatriate men's soccer players in the United States Panamanian expatriate sportspeople in Japan Panamanian expatriate sportspeople in Chile J1 League players J2 League players Japan Football League (1992–1998) players Major League Soccer players Panama national football team managers Panamanian football managers Tauro F.C. managers Liga Panameña de Fútbol players