An Unprecedented Tragedy: Goodbye to Diogo Jota, a real Portuguese hero
In losing Diogo Jota, we’ve lost one of truly underrated figures in sport.
It’s fair to say that the enduring image of Diogo Jota will be of someone who always gave maximum effort, smiled on the pitch, and celebrated with genuine passion alongside his fans. To lose someone with such an infectiously positive attitude, in something as tragic as a vehicle collision, is a sincere blow to football supporters everywhere.
The fact is the sporting world hasn’t experienced something of this heartbreaking magnitude since Kobe Bryant’s passing in 2019. Jota was still in the prime of his playing career with a long and bright future ahead of him. To lose his younger brother in the same accident is agonising to say the least.
Liverpool play a very ambitious and demanding style of attacking football, frankly there aren’t many players on earth who can handle the burdens of pace, athleticism, and intelligence that Jota has held up for years. He was previously an indispensable part of a much admired and overachieving Wolves team with a Portuguese core under Nuno Espírito Santo, one of the undeniable feel-good teams of the Premier League era.
The relationship between footballers and the public is extremely authentic and passionate in Portugal. It’s a small country with very high standards and the larger clubs pride themselves on producing talent that go on to perform at the very highest level. Not only is Jota immortalised as one of Porto’s greatest athletes, but he also had the honour of leading the line for the national team alongside Cristiano Ronaldo. It was, albeit briefly, a real passing of the torch from Portugal’s greatest ever sportsman to a player worthy of representing his country at the zenith of international competition.
A lot has been made of rivalry in the Premier League, especially between Liverpool and Manchester City in recent years, but in addition to his Liverpool teammates Jota played in the national team with City stars Bernardo Silva, Ruben Dias, and Matheus Nunes. The only silver lining of something this awful is that it brings people together in grief to remember what’s really important, and competition aside, there will be a lot of shared appreciation for their former teammate across both sides, and many others around the world.
Jota lived a full life in spite of its brevity. Only this year, he married his longtime partner with his three young children in attendance, lifted the Premier League trophy, and in what turned out to be his final match, he lifted the Nations League trophy for his country. Portugal has dealt with the tragic loss of players before, when Mikhlos Fehrer passed away on the pitch playing for Benfica in 2004, in the town of Guimaraes near where Jota passed away. José Mourinho referred to Fehrer’s passing as a watershed moment for the sport and this is no different. Players are commodified, criticised, and scrutinised, that will never change, but sometimes it takes a shock of this scale to remind us fans that they are human beings too.
Liverpool’s outspoken motto is, of course, You’ll Never Walk Alone, and for a team that sets itself apart through a sense of unity and pride, featuring players who have been with the team for years through good and bad, this will be the most painful test of that unity. Sport is a secondary consideration at a time like this but footballers at the highest level are artists, and while Arne Slot’s side have demonstrated their utmost professionalism time and again, they’ll have added motivation to honour the creativity and dedication of someone who made his club and country extremely proud.