How the best summer of Diogo Jota's life ended in tragedy

Telegraph

13 hours ago

With a shimmy, he passes one Everton defender. Another lunges in but is skirted with a touch from his left foot. Then Diogo Jota slams a low shot into the back of the net with his right, before wheeling away to the corner flag in celebration, pointing to the Liverpool badge on his chest and then to the Anfield turf as if to say: this place is mine.
In the space of two months after his last goal, the mercurial, beloved Portuguese football player would go on to win the Premier League, UEFA Nations League, and marry his long-time girlfriend, Rute Cardoso, the mother of his three children, in his hometown of Porto.
'Yes to Forever' he wrote on Instagram, underneath a stream of pictures from the ceremony just 11 days ago.
"The Reds BURST through on derby night!" 🎙️
Diogo Jota opens the scoring in the Merseyside derby in front of the Kop! 💥 pic.twitter.com/r2B3xRAfaa
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) April 2, 2025
It was, it appeared, the best summer of the 28-year-old's life.
But at 12:30am on Wednesday morning, that life was cut devastatingly short in a car crash on the motorway in Zamora, a province in northwestern Spain.
In images captured by Spanish media, a blackened twist of shredded metal is all that remains of the Lamborghini in which he was driving alongside his brother, Andre, also a footballer with the Portuguese second division side, Penarel.
In a statement to the press, the Spanish Guardia Civil flatly outlined the apparent cause of the crash on the A52, which links northern Portugal to Spain.
'The investigation points to a road accident due to a tyre burst while overtaking. As a result of the accident, the car caught fire and both occupants died,' it said.
Officials in high-visibility jackets knelt by the scene of the crash, taking photographs of the unrecognisable vehicle and shards of a grey metal barrier blown through by the force of the accident.
On Monday, Jota was due to report back to Liverpool for the return of pre-season training. As the news spread, a shockwave of grief engulfed the sporting world, with fans leaving flowered wreaths up against the brick walls of Anfield, a stadium he had sent into raptures since joining the club in 2020.
At the time, his £45 million transfer from Wolves appeared something of a gamble for Jurgen Klopp's side, which had just won the Premier League for the first time in twenty years. But then the mazy dribbles began, the ball pinging between Jota, Sadio Mane and Mohammed Salah, and the goals started to crack in the net, 85 of them in total over 165 appearances.
There could be an ecstasy to watching him play: a nimble sharp-shooter who whirred across the pitch in a blur of driving legs and furious effort.
'It doesn't make sense,' Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese captain, wrote in a tribute on social media. 'We were just together in the national team.'
In the 49th and final appearance Jota made, he was substituted at the interval in extra-time during Portugal's penalty shoot-out victory over Spain. It was the second trophy he lifted with his country, and added to the Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup and Championship trophies he already had at home.
This season, it was hoped he would return to his best form, having overcome a series of rib, hip, and muscle injuries that saw his game time carefully managed.
In the stands, he would have been watched by Ms Cardoso, and perhaps some of the high-school sweethearts' three young children, Denis, Duarte, and a daughter born in November last year.
In 2022, Ms Cardoso released a proposal video of Jota bending down on one knee under a pine-wreathed canopy in the garden of a holiday villa.
When the couple moved to the Midlands in 2017, with Jota joining Wolverhampton Wanderers from Atletico Madrid, she revealed that they had settled in for long binges of Peaky Blinders, the TV crime series set in the region.
A player who sometimes looked like he was being controlled by a Playstation, Jota revealed in 2021 that he was equally adept at online sports as the real thing – reaching the number one position worldwide in FIFA's Ultimate Team Championship Leaderboard, during an injury lay-off.
Appearing in a podcast with Liverpool's performance psychologist, Lee Richardson, last year, Jota stressed that he tried not to bring the 'stresses' of his career into his family home. 'You want to be the best father you can be,' he said.
'[You] try to lead by example… even though sometimes you want to get a bit more rest in the afternoon.'
'I had this yesterday after the game,' he told Mr Richardson. 'I wanted to get a bit of rest. One of my kids wanted to play some football and you need to be on it.'
This afternoon, Jota's body lies along with his brother's at the Zamora Forensic Medicine Institute, where post-mortems will soon take place.
Eleven days after they were married, posing in front of the gold-and-white altar in a Porto church, Ms Cardoso will have to prepare to attend the funeral of the man she had loved all her life.