Jota was that rare breed - a player you admired regardless of who you support

Daily Mirror

11 hours ago

If you don't follow football but you're wondering why the torrent of tributes to Diogo Jota has been so relentless, here are some of the reasons.
Yes, the Liverpool footballer was an outstanding, versatile player, arguably the best finisher in the English champions' squad on his day.
Yes, he lifted everything there was to win during his five years at Anfield.
And yes, he scored crucial goals last season to help them to win the title, including the winner - his last ever goal - in the Merseyside derby against Everton in April.
But he was also low maintenance, high in the good energy that attracts kindred spirits and universal respect.
He wasn't ever pictured falling out of nightclubs, engaging in unseemly Twitter/X controversies or involved in the pantomime, Baller League-type flare ups we see on Instagram.
Jota, the man, was summed up by the pictures that have so dominated the news agenda over the past 24 hours. A family man, a devoted man, taken too soon when the car he was in with his younger brother, Andre Silva, came off the road in north-west Spain on Thursday night.
They'd been driving through northern Spain to catch an overnight ferry to the UK for pre-season which had been due to start on Monday. Jota had been advised not to fly following lung surgery, according to reports in Portugal.
But the Lamborghini the siblings were in was said to have blown a tyre while overtaking on the A-52 at Cernadilla near Zamora - just ten miles over the border. We continue to await confirmation of the full, tragic circumstances.
But what we do know is that Jota was loved. He was cherished within his club and adored within his native Portugal.
He was the kind of guy who played computer games in his spare time. A guy who was still paying to play for his local club Gondomar at the age of 16, an age when some talented players in England are already pushing for a place in Premier League teams.
He was a footballer whose lack of malice, hostility and animosity during matches came as a refreshing antidote to so many of the tiresome antics we see at the elite level of domestic and European football.
He was a father, a son, most recently a husband whose low key life away from the game was summed up by the fact that he was with his brother when the tragedy struck.
It doesn't seem real to be talking about him in the past tense. Jota - aged 28. A man barely past the first few chapters of his life.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to suggest he was that rare breed - the kind of player you admired regardless of which team you support.
An army of top clubs and their fans had admired Jota and the 17 goals he'd scored to help Wolves into the Premier League as champions before Liverpool gazumped them all to sign him, five years ago.
How do the Premier League Champions now focus on football beyond this? How do they park their grief and get on the game again? It is a given that the game will wrap its collective arms around Jota's family.
But if we as journalists and fans are rocked by his sudden heartbreaking loss, what about Jota's close friends and colleagues in that dressing room. What about his bosses even? Sadly, Liverpool have a history stretching back decades of dealing with the kind of trauma they simply should not have to bear.
And the sadness of it all is in the timing. He was just 28. No age. In May, he'd celebrated winning the Premier League title with Liverpool, he posted pictures all over his socials.
In June he helped Portugal to win the Nations League international tournament alongside the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo.
And less than two weeks ago he was married. Gorgeous pictures on his social media accounts of him with his childhood sweetheart, Rute Cardoso and his three children. Now, in the blink of an eye, she is a widow. He has been taken away from them.
Football comes very much second to the magnitude of the chasm left in the Jota family. It will never be filled.
What we do know is that he will never be forgotten.