RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Jorge Jesus has left his position as Al-Hilal head coach by mutual consent, the Saudi Arabian soccer team announced Saturday.
The departure of the 70-year-old veteran coach comes just four days after Al-Hilal lost the semifinal of the AFC Champions League Elite to Saudi Arabian rival Al-Ahli.
“The Board of Directors of Al-Hilal Club Company has agreed with the Portuguese head coach of the first football team Jorge Jesus to terminate the contractual relationship between them,” the club posted on social media.
Last season, Jesus, the former Benfica coach who was appointed in July 2023, led Al-Hilal on a world-record winning streak of 34 games as the Riyadh club won a record 19th Saudi Pro League title. This season, however, the club is six points behind leader Al-Ittihad with just five games remaining.
Mohammed Al-Shalhoub will take temporary control of the team but it has been reported in domestic media that a foreign coach will be appointed before the four-time Asian champions take on Real Madrid in its opening game of the FIFA Club World Cup on June 18.
Jesus’ departure comes at a time when he is being linked in various media reports with the Brazil head coach position, vacant since Dorival Junior was fired in March.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Al Hilal's Salem Al-Dawsari, right, shields the ball with Al Ahli's Ali Hassan Majrashi during a AFC Champions League Elite semifinal soccer match at Alinma Stadium in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, April, 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Ali Issa)
FILE -Benfica's coach Jorge Jesus gestures as he talks during a news conference, March 26, 2012 at Benfica's Luz stadium in Lisbon. (AP Photo/Armando Franca, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of New York City nurses returned to the picket lines Tuesday as their strike targeting some of the city’s leading hospital systems entered its second day.
Union officials say roughly 15,000 nurses walked off the job Monday morning at multiple campuses of three hospital systems: NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, Montefiore Medical Center and Mount Sinai.
The affected hospitals have hired droves of temporary nurses to try to fill the labor gap. Both nurses and hospital administrators have urged patients not to avoid getting care during the strike.
New York City, like the U.S. as a whole, has had an active flu season. The city logged over 32,000 cases during the week ending Dec. 20 — the highest one-week tally in at least 20 years — though numbers have since declined, the Health Department said last Thursday.
Roy Permaul, an intensive care unit nurse who was among those picketing in front of Mount Sinai's flagship campus in Manhattan, said he and his colleagues are prepared to walk off the job as long as needed to secure a better contract.
But Dania Munoz, a nurse practitioner at Mount Sinai, stressed that the union’s fight wasn’t just about better wages.
“We deserve fair pay, but this is about safety for our patients, for ourselves and for our profession,” the 31-year-old Bronx resident said. “The things that we’re fighting for, we need. We need health care. We need safety. We need more staffing.”
The New York State Nurses Association said Tuesday that none of the hospitals have agreed to additional bargaining sessions with the union since their last meetings on Sunday.
It also complained that Mount Sinai, which operates seven hospitals, unlawfully fired three nurses hours after the strike started and improperly disciplined 14 others who had spoken out about workplace violence or discussed the union and contract negotiations with their colleagues.
Mount Sinai spokespersons said Tuesday the claims were “not accurate” and that they would provide more information later. Mt. Sinai has said approximately 20% of its nurses reported for work on the first day of the strike rather than picketing.
Meanwhile, Montefiore Medical Center said it has “not canceled even one patient’s access to care” during the work stoppage. The city Emergency Management Department said it hasn’t seen major impacts to patient care so far.
The hospital system also criticized unionized nurses for seeking “troubling proposals” such as demanding that nurses not be terminated, even if found to be compromised by drugs or alcohol while on the job.
The union said Montefiore was “blatantly mischaracterizing” one of its basic workplace proposals, which would have added protections for nurses dealing with substance use disorders and which has already been adopted in other hospitals around the state.
The labor action comes three years after a similar strike forced medical facilities to transfer some patients and divert ambulances.
As with the 2023 labor action, nurses have pointed to staffing issues as a major flashpoint, accusing the big-budget medical centers of refusing to commit to provisions for safe, manageable workloads.
The private, nonprofit hospitals involved in the current negotiations say they’ve made strides in staffing in recent years and have cast the union’s demands as prohibitively expensive.
On Monday, the city's new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, stood beside nurses on a picket line outside NewYork-Presbyterian, praising the union’s members for seeking “dignity, respect and the fair pay and treatment that they deserve.”
Nurses strike in front of Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Nurses strike in front of Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Nurses strike outside New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
