Jorge Jesus had always felt that he would become an outstanding professional head coach.
Although over the past decade-plus, his coaching résumé could only be described as unremarkable.
Without an outstanding playing career, Jorge Jesus had decided early on that he would become a head coach and worked toward that goal, later getting his chance to coach Felgueiras in the Porto district.
In the years that followed, he moved between several teams in Portugal's lower divisions, including a spell coaching Madeira Union.
It was that half-year stint at Madeira Union that earned him the chance to coach the Primeira Liga side Amadora.
He ambitiously wanted to make his mark in the Primeira Liga. During his three seasons at Amadora, his results consistently placed the team in mid-table, quite steadily, and that made people acknowledge Jorge Jesus's coaching ability.
The Amadora under his management used a 4-4-2 as their base formation and adopted a high pressing and pressure-based tactic, which made them very much in line with the mainstream trend in European football at the time, turning them into an emerging force in the Primeira Liga that could not be underestimated.
After achieving success at Amadora, Jorge Jesus was eager to take his coaching résumé another step forward, so he left the financially limited Amadora and joined the ambitious Setúbal, leading the team successfully from the Portuguese League into the Primeira Liga. But in this season's Primeira Liga, Setúbal's first half of the campaign had not been ideal.
In the end, Jorge Jesus failed to survive the cold Winter Break either. Along with Porto manager Machado, both men were dismissed, becoming fellow sufferers in the Primeira Liga. But unlike Machado, Jorge Jesus was invited back by his former club Amadora almost immediately after he was sacked.
At this point, after sending