Diogo Jota's death leaves Liverpool locked in numb disbelief
Yesterday, just a few yards away, nestled in a shrine marking the sudden, brutal, end of his life, was his No 20 shirt with the message scrawled, 'Forever a champion.'
Almost as soon as the news broke of his death, the residents of Anfield began laying flowers outside the famous stadium. These were not even match-goers in many cases — just those who wanted to demonstrate their respect to a player who Liverpudlians could identify with.
A lot of the descriptions were similar. Jota was a diminutive, edgy footballer who, on the pitch, always seemed to be ready for the fight. His last goal for the club was the winner in a Merseyside derby and though the relief inside Anfield that night was enormous, it wasn't a surprise that he proved to be the saviour.
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One-on-one, Jota reminded you of Robbie Fowler. Getting there, he would force his way through small gaps like Luis Suarez. He was cunning and crafty. He never quite became a central figure in the Liverpool team due to injuries but when he was available, his perseverance and inventiveness meant you could rely on him to pop up, breathing life into the performances of others — as he did against Everton.
His death is hard to process. By midday, amid the shirts from Manchester United, Leeds United, Rangers and Jota's former club, Wolverhampton Wanderers, there were so many bouquets outside Anfield that it was pointless counting them. As soon as you had a number, it increased.
There was warmth in the air and barely a cloud in the sky — a perfect summer's afternoon — but everyone seemed numb, largely struggling to express their feelings when asked about the fact he is no longer here.
The same theme kept coming up. Each time Jota represented Liverpool at this venue, he would walk off the pitch and wave to his family. Talking about him as a footballer felt inappropriate. People were thinking mainly about wife, Rute, and their three kids. Jota married his childhood sweetheart only a fortnight ago in Portugal, when Andy Robertson was one of the guests and he observed his friend 'bursting with love for his wife and family'.
While it was acknowledged that this is a dreadful loss for Liverpool, her pain is unimaginable. Tragedy is not a strong enough word. What has happened to her is catastrophic.
Jota's last public appearance in Liverpool was on the day the squad paraded the Premier League trophy around the city. The beery bus carrying Jota and his team-mates had just passed Water Street when a car rammed into supporters, injuring more than 100. Now this. It was meant to be a summer of celebration, especially after Liverpool's last league title in 2020 came amid a pandemic and unprecedented restrictions. Instead, it will be remembered as a period of grief and shock.
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Since joining Liverpool a few months after that title win, Jota had lived in Blundellsands near Crosby beach, largely keeping himself to himself. Robertson would offer an insight into his character, describing him as 'the most British foreign person I've ever met', with the pair sometimes joking that he was Irish, rather than Portuguese. If that were the case, he'd have been even closer to Liverpool than maybe even Jota realised, given the city's links with Dublin and the land beyond.
Stories emerged of how he had touched the lives of others in ways that did not simply involve doing the business for Liverpool. One supporter, for example, posted a video online from four years ago when Jota sent his unwell father a personalised message with advice about keeping a positive frame of mind.
Yet even if his personality away from the pitch did not always come through, Liverpudlians knew the footballer and this is enough for them to feel such an enormous sense of loss. Liverpool have become sadly familiar with seeing grief entwine with the fortunes of their football club in the last 40 years, but never in their modern history has an active first-team player passed away, never mind in circumstances as brutal as this.
Liverpool as a place is sometimes told it is maudlin in reacting to tragedy, but anyone who knows anything about the city's past receives that as a Hillsborough slur: a suppressant following the worst stadium disaster in British history, when many wrongly believed lies pedalled by the authorities and sections of the media.
There was certainly no over-reaction outside Anfield yesterday, as the afternoon drifted into a lazy summer's evening when, ordinarily, any troubled minds would not relate to football.
Instead, it felt as though the club at the centre of this story, as well as the city that surrounds it, was still processing what had happened. As the sun went down, supporters were still there, staring into the middle distance, quietly saying prayers for a lost footballer who frequently delivered for them when it mattered.
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