Jorginho completes historic European cup double

From Champion of Europe to European Champion, Jorginho — who has gone 34 unbeaten with Italy now — has written his name into European football’s history books as only the tenth player to complete the European cup Double: i.e. to win both the Champions League (née European Cup) with his club and the European Football Championship with his country in the same year.

And no, according to UEFA’s criteria, Emerson didn’t become the eleventh player to do so because he didn’t actually play in the Champions League final. He was on the bench, but was not one of the three substitutes used by Chelsea that night. Emerson’s unlikely to care about this; it’s all a bit arbitrary in the end.

Incidentally, Jorginho’s not the first or the second Chelsea player to accomplish this feat, which is pretty impressive considering that we’ve only won the Champions League twice (thus far). Back in 2012, both Fernando Torres and Juan Mata came off the bench to play (and score!) in the Euro 2012 final, which Spain won handily, 4-0 — against Italy!

Not a bad omen for whoever’s on the team the next time we win the Champions League in a Euro year!

As per UEFA, the ten players who can claim this double are:

1964: Luis Suárez (Internazionale Milano & Spain)
1988: Hans van Breukelen, Ronald Koeman, Berry van Aerle, Gerald Vanenburg (PSV Eindhoven & Netherlands)
2012: Fernando Torres, Juan Mata (Chelsea & Spain)
2016: Cristiano Ronaldo, Pepe (Real Madrid & Portugal)
2020: Jorginho (Chelsea and Italy)

Hopefully Jorginho’s mid-match knee injury won’t turn out to have any negative effects besides making him miss his penalty in the shootout.