Champions League and EURO double winners
Sunday, July 11, 2021
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Jorginho has become the tenth player to win a European Cup and a European Championship in the same year, Italy's triumph following his victory with Chelsea.
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The Azzurri's UEFA EURO 2020 triumph has given midfielder Jorginho entry to an elite club of players to have won both a European Cup and a European Championship in the same year, following on from Chelsea's UEFA Champions League success in May.
To qualify as 'double winners', players must appear in both winning finals. Incidentally, no one has lifted the EURO and the UEFA Europa League/UEFA Cup trophies in the same summer since 1996, when Bayern stars Markus Babbel, Thomas Helmer, Thomas Strunz, Christian Ziege, Mehmet Scholl and Jürgen Klinsmann went on to win the EURO with Germany.
The other contenders in 2021
Chelsea beat Manchester City 1-0 in Porto to clinch their second UEFA Champions League title, and they did it with a squad brimming with international talent. No fewer than 11 of the Blues players who prevailed at the Estádio do Dragão began UEFA EURO 2020 hoping to double up this summer – and four were still standing going into the final: Jorginho with Italy and Ben Chilwell, Reece James and Mason Mount for England.
Meanwhile, four players have followed European Cup final defeat with EURO victory in the same year: Ignacio Zoco and Amancio Amaro (1964, Real Madrid and Spain) and Manfred Kaltz and Horst Hrubesch (1980, Hamburg and West Germany).
In 2008, Germany's Michael Ballack, then with Chelsea, became the first player to appear in European Cup and EURO final defeats in the same year; Antoine Griezmann also suffered the double disappointment in 2016 with Atlético de Madrid and France.
European Cup-EURO double winners
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)
Wim Kieft is not on the list; despite having claimed the 1988 European Cup with PSV, he did not make it off the bench with the Netherlands in the 1988 UEFA European Championship final.
Real Madrid's Nicolas Anelka met the same fate with France in 2000, while team-mate Christian Karembeu fared slightly worse – he was an unused squad member in the finals of both the 2000 UEFA Champions League and UEFA EURO 2000 (albeit he had been on the pitch to win the UEFA Champions League and 1998 FIFA World Cup two summers before).
European Cup-World Cup double winners
1974: Sepp Maier, Paul Breitner, Hans-Georg Schwarzenbeck, Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Müller, Uli Hoeness (Bayern & West Germany)
1998: Christian Karembeu (Real Madrid & France)
2002: Roberto Carlos (Real Madrid & Brazil)
2018: Raphaël Varane (Real Madrid & France)
At the 2018 World Cup, Raphaël Varane had a doubly special feeling as he landed his second major winners' medal of the summer, having picked up the most important trophy in European club football with Madrid a few weeks earlier.
Sami Khedira nearly joined the same band in 2014, but an injury in the warm-up prevented him turning out for Germany in their World Cup final win against Argentina. He had tasted UEFA Champions League glory with Madrid less than two months before.