Diogo Jota died along with his brother early Thursday in a vehicle accident in northwest Spain, the Spanish Civil Guard said.SERGEI GAPON/AFP/Getty Images
The global soccer community came together as one on Thursday to mourn the passing of Liverpool and Portugal star Diogo Jota, 28, and his brother André Silva, 25, who died in an early morning car crash in Spain.
The pair were in Jota’s Lamborghini shortly after midnight local time, which, according to the Spanish Civil Guard, had blown a tire while overtaking, veered off the road near the northwestern city of Zamora and caught fire.
Lionel Messi, David Beckham and Jota’s international teammate Cristiano Ronaldo all paid tribute to the pair on social media, while icons from other sports – such as Rafael Nadal and LeBron James, who owns 1 per cent of Liverpool’s parent organization, Fenway Sports Group – also shared their condolences on the tragedy.
Jota, who had married his high-school sweetheart 11 days ago in Porto, had been travelling back to Liverpool for preseason training, which begins on Monday.
The club responded Thursday – after hundreds of fans had laid wreaths outside of Anfield – by announcing that Jota’s No. 20 jersey would be retired.
According to the BBC, Liverpool’s club doctors had advised him not to fly following recent minor surgery, so he was set to take a ferry back to Britain from the Spanish port of Santander.
He leaves behind his wife, Rute Cardoso, and three children. Silva was a professional soccer player for Penafiel in Portugal’s second division.
“Doesn’t make any sense,” Ronaldo, the Portugal national-team captain, said on Instagram, just a month after he and Jota had helped Portugal to the Nations League crown.
“Just now we were together in the national team, just now you were married. To your family, to your wife and children, I send my condolences and wish them all the strength in the world. I know you will always be with them. R.I.P. Diogo and Andre. We will all miss you.”
Here in Canada, the loss of Jota, one of Liverpool and Portugal’s best attacking talents, was felt just as keenly as in Europe.
Having played with Jota during his time with the Portugal under-21 team, Canadian men’s national team vice-captain Stephen Eustáquio posted a team photo of their time together on Instagram, along with the words: “Memórias … Descansa em Paz amigo” (Memories … Rest in Peace friend.)
Though he now plays for Porto in Portugal’s top flight, both Eustáquio and Jota had come through second-division Portuguese club Pacos de Ferreira on their way to establishing themselves as international stars.
Stephen’s brother Mauro Eustáquio, who was born in Portugal and now coaches York United of the Canadian Premier League, said that Jota, who was captain of that under-21 team, had helped Stephen settle in when he first arrived in Portugal’s national-team setup.
“Obviously, I spoke to my brother about this devastating news,” Mauro said. “And he mentioned that when he went into the locker room at that point, my brother, obviously, coming from a small club, Jota was one to not make him feel small and make him feel part of a band, let’s call it, and [Stephen] had nothing but good things to say about him.”
Mauro Eustáquio also said that despite Jota’s impressive statistics – he scored 47 goals in 123 games for Liverpool, and another 14 in 49 appearances for Portugal – he brought a little spice to the pitch. Although he was far from big – checking in at 5 foot 10 – like other Portugal wingers, he refused to be intimidated by bigger opponents.
“He’s someone that never backed down from a fight,” Mauro Eustáquio said. “And I think, not only Ronaldo, but there’s a lot of players in the soccer world that are Portuguese that have that grit about them.”
Fans gathered Thursday outside Anfield stadium to pay their respects to Diogo Jota and his brother.
The Associated Press
That resilience is part of the total package that made him a beloved star at Liverpool, where he had just helped lead the team to its 20th English League championship in May this year, pulling the club into a tie with Manchester United for most in English soccer history.
Another quality that those who have met Jota recall is his sense of calm. Sultan Mehrabi, a member of the Official Liverpool Supporters Club Toronto, met the forward after a 3-0 win over Brentford at Anfield in which the Portuguese star had scored the third goal.
On hearing there was a quartet of fans from Toronto who had come to the game, Jota happily posed for photos, shaking hands and hanging out, with Mehrabi saying that the player wanted to meet them as a way of saying thanks for how far they had come.
“The thing that I remember is his calmness; it changed the room,” Mehrabi said. “That’s the one thing I remember when he came in is just the opposite of [then-manager Jurgen] Klopp.
“Klopp came in and he was laughing and making noise.”
However, that brief meeting with Jota – whom he described as “a quiet, friendly soul” – makes Thursday’s news especially poignant for Mehrabi, who is Iranian but born and raised in Kuwait, moving to Canada in 2010.
“Meeting him honestly, until today, it didn’t have meaning, right?” Mehrabi said. “Like today is when I really felt something different, because I met him, and I felt like, ‘Man, I lost a friend.’ ”
Jota seemed to have had that effect on people. Though he helped Liverpool win three trophies during his time with the club – since his £45-million ($83-million) move from Wolves five years ago – he touched many hearts in and around Merseyside.
Football fans stand next to tributes in memory of Liverpool player Diogo Jota at Anfield Stadium, home of Liverpool FC in Liverpool on Thursday.Ian Hodgson/The Associated Press
His last goal for the club was the winner against cross-town rival Everton in the Merseyside Derby at Anfield in April, a goal that went a long way to help push Liverpool over the line in the title race. And it’s that clutch finishing – five of his nine goals for Liverpool this season were match winners – that goes a long way to explain the love fans have for their Portuguese talisman.
“He was just something so special in the clutch moments,” said Aizaz Sheikh, the director of marketing and communications for the OLSC Toronto. “We’re so fortunate to have stars. We’ve got different stars for different things. But no one would come up with those moments like Diogo Jota.”
As someone who was born just outside of Liverpool in Cheshire, Sheikh, 43, gets back home two or three times a year and has seen Jota play many times in person, with his brother a season-ticket holder at Anfield.
Despite all the club’s glory – with six Champions League titles to go along with their league titles successes – Sheikh has also known Liverpool’s history of tragedy, with Jota’s sudden death following on from the well-known stadium tragedies such as Heysel and Hillsborough in the eighties.
But he feels that Liverpool’s club values help it cope with the depths of despair.
“You have to obviously acknowledge that it is part of our club,” Sheikh said. “So, it doesn’t make it easier. But I think the way the club is built in terms of the values, the motto ‘you’ll never walk alone,’ it’s almost like we as a club seem to handle it for want of a better term.”