Mostly it is fathers who want to realize their own ambitions through their sons.

The son is dragged to soccer, he is supposed to become a star, but is not infrequently unhappy.

In the case of Jorge Luiz Frello Filho, known as Jorginho, it was different.

His mother Maria Tereza, a Brazilian amateur kicker, did not give up on him.

Already in childhood, people trained daily on the beach.

It seems that the son is reasonably happy today, it couldn't be any better in terms of sport. Jorginho, 29 years old, won the Champions League with Chelsea under Thomas Tuchel in May and is the central player in the Italian national team. This Wednesday they will face Switzerland in the second Group A game in Rome (9 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the European Football Championship, on ARD and on MagentaTV) and could qualify for the round of 16 ahead of time with a win.

Italy's team is a team without stars. In the 3-0 opening win against Turkey, coach Roberto Mancini's players ran storm against a defense that only collapsed after a good 50 minutes with a stupid own goal from Merih Demiral. The way in which the “squadra azzurra” achieved this victory was remarkable. They combined as a team, played intense pressing, had it in mind to recapture the ball at lightning speed and offered one of the most attractive performances at this European Championship so far.

All three strikers, Domenico Berardi, Ciro Immobile and Lorenzo Insigne, each contributed to a goal.

The mechanisms are well established, with possession of the ball, the 4-3-3 structure shifts to an ultra-offensive 2-3-5 system.

The decisive factor is the balance in the midfield.

Italy have not conceded a goal in nine games and have not lost in 28 games.

After failing to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, coach Mancini overturned a lot, the notorious Italian safety football is long gone.

“I want a team that dominates the opponent,” says the coach.

The discovery of Maurizio Sarri

For this you need technically and tactically experienced, football-wise intelligent players. Jorginho is the core of this project, a particularly ball-safe, technically fine and duel-strong director in the headquarters, who determines the rhythm and the strategy of the moment. Because of his tactical intelligence, he is considered to be the coach's extended arm. “He's the only irreplaceable person on the team,” writes the Corriere della Sera. Born in Imbituba in the Brazilian coastal state of Santa Caterina in 1991, the director is usually not particularly noticeable, his playing style is not spectacular.

Jorginho distributes, controls, animates, he is the inconspicuous brain of the team. "He has something special, a special eye for space, he sees more than the others," says his former coach Maurizio Sarri about him. At SSC Napoli, Sarri initially preferred other players, Jorginho sat on the bench for the time being. However, the coach soon discovered the game intelligence of the native Brazilian, who has an Italian great-great-grandfather and has therefore also had Italian citizenship since 2012.

After all, Sarri was so enthusiastic about the midfielder that he wanted to take him with him when he switched to Chelsea in 2018.

The purchase price is said to have been 60 million euros, but Jorginho initially had a hard time in London.

The fans whistled him out, and winning the Europa League didn't change that.

It takes everywhere to understand Jorginho.

"Please don't call me Giorgio"

Sarri was worshiped in Naples for his dominant attacking football, a nod to Pep Guardiola's Manchester City.

Italy's national coach Mancini has now added Jürgen Klopp's obsessive counter-pressing from Liverpool FC to the Italian repertoire in addition to the dominant attitude.

Jorginho, together with Nicoló Barella, is the man behind the tips, who sets the pace for it.

Its importance is currently so clearly visible because the other director, Marco Verratti (Paris Saint-Germain), is still injured on the bench.

At the latest in the last group game against Wales, Italy's most technically gifted footballer should also be back in action.

Hardly any other team has as much quality in the game center as Italy.

“Please don't call me Giorgio,” said Jorginho after his naturalization in Verona in 2012.

At 15 he had left Brazil to live the mother's dream that soon became his own.

In 2007 he started in the youth teams of Hellas Verona, was loaned to a fourth division team in the province.

In 2013 he was promoted from the second to the first Italian division with Hellas Verona.

It went slowly uphill, always with hurdles.

Also in the Italian national team. Antonio Conte called Jorginho into the national team for the first time in 2016, but he did not take him to the EM in the same year. Conte's successor, Gian Piero Ventura, never nominated the midfielder, only for the decisive play-off game against Sweden in 2017, which sealed Italy's non-qualification for the World Cup. The EM is the chance for Jorginho to once again show what he can really do.