Artur Jorge

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Personal information
Artur Jorge
Full name	Artur Jorge Braga de Melo Teixeira
Date of birth	February 13, 1946
Place of birth	Porto, Portugal
Position	Striker
Club information
Current club	Lusitanos
Professional clubs*
Years	Club	Apps (goals)
1964-65 1965-69 1969-1975 1975-1978 1977	FC Porto Académica SL Benfica Belenenses Rochester Lancers	4 (1) 96 (72) 95 (72) 51 (14)
National team
1967-1977	Portugal	16 (1)
* Professional club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only.

Artur Jorge Braga Melo Teixeira (born February 13, 1946, in Porto) is a Portuguese football coach and a former football player. He is also known for writing poetry. He was chosen by Portuguese sports newspaper Record as one of the best 100 Portuguese football players ever.

[edit] Player

As a junior player, he started at the junior team of FC Porto. As professional player, he played for Académica de Coimbra and SL Benfica, before ending his career in Belenenses, at 1977/78, due to a serious injury. During his player days in Coimbra, Artur Jorge was student at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra, graduating in Germanic Philology by the University of Lisbon in 1975, after his transfer for Lisbon's Benfica. In the overall, as a player, he won four Portuguese Football Championships, two Portuguese Football Cups and two silver boots, as the prize for best goalscorers. Despite having been one of the top scorers of Benfica during his time at the Lisbon team, the concorrence of other great forwards, like Eusébio, Jordão and Nené, explain why he had only 16 caps for Portugal National Team, 2 for Académica, 13 for Benfica and 1 for Belenenses, scoring a single goal. His debut was, at 27 March 1967, a 1-1 tie with Italy, in a friendly match, in Rome, and his last game, at 30 March 1977, resulted in a 1-0 win over Switzerland, in another friendly match, in Funchal. He was a member of the squad that reached the Independence Brazil Cup final, in 1972, the highest point of his international career. He was submitted to knee surgery for five times: this was one of the causes of his declining at the end of the career. One day, training in the Estádio Nacional, he broke a leg and never played again.

[edit] Manager

After his player career, he went to Leipzig in then East Germany, to study football and training methodology. He signed at F.C. Porto for the 1984/85 season, where he won three National Champion titles (1984/85, 1985/86, 1989/90) and two Cups of Portugal (1988, 1991). His greatest success was to win the European Champions Cup with F.C. Porto, in a great victory over favourites Bayern Munich (2-1). Artur Jorge is known since then as "King Artur" (Rei Artur). He moved to Racing Paris the next season, and returned to FC Porto in 1988/89. He moved to Paris Saint-Germain, in 1991/92, where he won the National Championship, in 1993/94. He moved to Benfica, in 1994/95, finishing 3rd with his team, and was replaced at the beginning of the following season. Since then he has been coach of several other clubs: Académica de Coimbra, Vitesse Arnhem, CD Tenerife, CSKA Moscow, and the Portugal national football team, first, still as FC Porto coach, for 1989/90 and 1990/91, later for the 1996/97 and 1997/98 seasons, Switzerland national football team, and since 2005, Cameroon national football team. He failed to lead his team to the 2006 World Cup. He managed Saudi club Al-Nasr for only two cup matches and was sacked following a 4-1 defeat by lowly club side Al-Faisaly. Artur Jorge is currently the manager of French second division team US Créteil-Lusitanos.