Liverpool FC will retire Diogo Jota's No20 out of respect and his song will echo on Kop into eternity
Diogo Jota's untimely death is an incomprehensible shock to the global army of Reds fans who worshipped him.
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We see our heroes as indestructible, and the striker Jota was no exception.
He regularly worked miracles.
His final goal for Liverpool confirmed his legendary status: a late winner to push his team closer to that 20th league title.
At the Kop end.
In a Merseyside derby.
Goals don't come much bigger than that. Jota the Slotter's crucial strikes earned him the ultimate badge of honour — his own song from adoring Kopites.
Even when on the bench, the crowd would bellow it out to the tune of Creedence Clearwater Revival's hit Bad Moon Rising.
Barely a month ago, I was among a record 1.5million who saw him and his teammates parade the Premier League trophy through Liverpool on an open-top bus.
It turned into a harrowing day when a motorist drove into a crowd, injuring 109.
'Profound loss and shock' - Martin Lipton on death of Liverpool star Diogo Jota dies aged 28 in tragic car crash
Two weeks after that day of triumph and horror, Jota lifted the UEFA Nations League trophy with Portugal.
And only ten days ago he married his sweetheart Rute, mother of his three young children.
Our grief as fans cannot begin to compare with the pain felt by the Jota family, who have lost not only Diogo but his younger brother, Andre.
I'm sure the club and its supporters will ensure they never walk alone.
Over decades as a Liverpool fan, I've stood many times in silent tribute to Kop legends - from Bill Shankly and Ron Yeats to Gerard Houllier and Ray Kennedy.
No crowd does it better than Anfield.
But there will be an added poignancy when Diogo is honoured as he enters the pantheon of lost legends at the age of just 28.
I suspect the club will retire the Number 20 he wore as a mark of respect.
But his song will echo on the Kop into eternity.
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Kooky style So devoted is she to tattoos that midfielder Georgia Stanway, 26, not only has around 100 of her own inkings, but she's also learned to tattoo other people. The Bayern Munich star's kooky style has won her sponsors including Nike and an advertising deal with Celsius drinks, who featured on her Instagram page, where she has 433,000 followers. Off the pitch, she's been with Toulouse rugby league player Olly Ashall-Bott since 2022.
The Guardian
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One of the areas of tension was the disconnect between the players from Lyon, who were professionals at the time, and those from Juvisy (later Paris FC) and Paris Saint-Germain, who were still semi-professional. The current Chelsea head coach, Sonia Bompastor, touches on the subject in her book Une vie de foot, which was published this year, writing: 'We weren't on the same wavelength at all, and we didn't have the same conception of what it meant to be a footballer. For me, losing a match was the end of the world; not for them.' Abily, who is Bompastor's assistant at Chelsea, insists that in her day, the team 'didn't realise' the quality it had. 'I remember that when we qualified for the semi-finals of the World Cup in 2011, we said to ourselves: 'Wow! That's great, we're here, we've qualified!' Bussaglia, who finished fourth with France at the 2011 World Cup and the following year's Olympics, adds: 'There are times when the French team should have at least won a medal, if not the title, and it didn't happen. There needs to be a bit more of a winning culture. But it's not just the federation, it's everyone: the players, the staff, the fans, everyone. Around this French team, there's still not enough desire to win.' Bompastor has also spoken about the lack of interest from the French FA in the women's team in the past. 'Nobody gave a damn about the French women's team,' she wrote in her book. 'We used to go and see Noël Le Graët, the president of the federation, to explain to him that the reason Lyon were European champions was because we'd put certain processes in place, and not because we'd gone off to summer camps with a singing coach [referring to Bruno Bini, Les Bleues coach from 2007 to 2013 who wrote songs for the players]. The only thing that mattered to him was our popularity rating and our good image.' There was a feeling by some players that the French FA was using the women's team to restore its reputation after the catastrophic 2010 World Cup when the men's team went on strike and refused to train by staying on the team bus. A lack of ambition is no longer true today, says Eric Blahic, who was assistant coach to Corinne Diacre and then Hervé Renard (2023-24) and was delighted to see the latter end the 'famous semi-final complex'. 'For years, the girls were told that they had to be in the sem-finals,' he says. 'That doesn't mean anything. Third or fourth is not the same thing. You have to say: the objective is the final.' He also rejects the idea that France have failed to go all the way because of a mental block. 'In 1982, when the French men's team played in the semi-final in Seville, when we led 3-1 and ended up being eliminated, people were already saying that it was mental problems. If that's all it was, the federation would have taken action a long time ago.' Laurent Bonadei was appointed as Renard's successor in August 2024 and since then a full-time mental performance coach, Thomas Sammut, has been part of the team 'to break this glass ceiling'. He has made other changes too, dropping three key players – Le Sommer, Renard and Kenza Dali – just before the Euros, saying that 'if it doesn't work you have to try something new'. Bonadei will also have to deal with Les Bleues' misfortune when it comes to penalties in major tournaments. Bussaglia says of the Olympics semi-final defeat to Japan in 2012: 'At the Olympics, in the semi-final, we were 2-1 down and I missed the penalty to make it 2-2. I'd never missed a penalty in my life but I missed that one.' Blahic, meanwhile, recalls the shootout loss to Australia in the 2023 World Cup, when Kenza Dali missed her spot kick against club teammate Mackenzie Arnold not once but twice as it was retaken. 'All the girls had taken lots of penalties in training, in all different forms, against three different goalkeepers,' he explains. Bonadei prefers to refer to France as 'outsiders' rather than favourites, despite having won their eight last games going into the tournament. 'Confidence is good for developing our game, but overconfidence is the trap that awaits us,' warns Bonadei. In Switzerland there is unlikely to be overconfidence as France have to battle against not only their opponents, but their past too.
