Mário Jorge da Silva Pinho Fernandes (born 24 August 1961), known as Mário Jorge, is a Portuguese retired

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

left midfielder In the sport of association football, a midfielder takes an outfield position primarily in the middle of the pitch. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. ...

Club career

Born in

Ponta Delgada Ponta Delgada (; ) is the largest municipality (''concelho'') and executive capital of the Autonomous Region of the Azores in Portugal. It is located on São Miguel Island, the largest and most populous in the archipelago. As of 2021, it has 67,2 ...

Azores The Azores ( , , ; , ), officially the Autonomous Region of the Azores (), is one of the two autonomous regions of Portugal (along with Madeira). It is an archipelago composed of nine volcanic islands in the Macaronesia region of the North Atl ...

, Mário Jorge made his professional debut with

Sporting CP Sporting Clube de Portugal (), otherwise referred to as Sporting CP or simply Sporting (particularly within Portugal), or as Sporting Lisbon in other countries,

at the age of 18, appearing in one match in 1979–80 as the

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

club won the

Primeira Liga The Primeira Liga (), also known as Liga Portugal Betclic for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Portugal and the highest level of the Portuguese football league system. Organised and supervised by the Liga ...

championship. He was already an important midfield player as the team conquered it again two seasons later, the last for the following 18 years. After only 12 games in 1988–89, Mário Jorge left Sporting and signed for S.C. Beira-Mar in the same league, but returned to where he had come from at the end of the campaign, again being rarely used. He concluded his career in 1995 after stints with two other sides from the capital, C.F. Estrela da Amadora and

G.D. Estoril Praia Grupo Desportivo Estoril Praia (), commonly known as Estoril, is a Portuguese professional sports club from Estoril, Cascais, Lisbon. Founded on 17 May 1939, its Association football, football team currently plays in Primeira Liga and hold home g ...

, both in the Segunda Liga; he later worked as

sporting director A sporting director, or director of sport, is an executive management position in a sports club. The role is well known as a manager role for European football clubs, which are sometime also "sports clubs", offering many types of sports. The ...

at the latter.

International career

Mário Jorge earned nine

caps Caps are flat headgear. Caps or CAPS may also refer to: Science and technology Computing * CESG Assisted Products Service, provided by the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters * Composite Application Platform Suite, by Java Caps, a Java ...

for

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

, seven of those coming after the

1986 FIFA World Cup The 1986 FIFA World Cup was the 13th FIFA World Cup, a quadrennial Association football, football tournament for men's senior national teams. It was played in Mexico from 31 May to 29 June 1986. The tournament was the second to feature a 24-tea ...

following the defection of practically all of the national team squad due to the infamous

Saltillo Affair The Saltillo Affair () was a series of controversies surrounding the Portugal national football team during its participation in the Mexico 1986 FIFA World Cup. The affair was named after the Mexican city of Saltillo, Coahuila, in which the team ...

. His debut, however, took place on 8 June 1983, when he featured the full 90 minutes in a 4–0 friendly loss against

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

Coimbra Coimbra (, also , , or ), officially the City of Coimbra (), is a city and a concelho, municipality in Portugal. The population of the municipality at the 2021 census was 140,796, in an area of . The fourth-largest agglomerated urban area in Po ...

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Jorge, Mario 1961 births Living people Sportspeople from Ponta Delgada Portuguese men's footballers Footballers from the Azores Men's association football midfielders Primeira Liga players Liga Portugal 2 players Sporting CP footballers S.C. Beira-Mar players C.F. Estrela da Amadora players G.D. Estoril Praia players Portugal men's youth international footballers Portugal men's under-21 international footballers Portugal men's international footballers 20th-century Portuguese sportsmen