Foe lived in an apartment right across the road from us. It was really sad. They couldnât track down a relative for a while and until a few years ago it still had all his clothes hanging in it.
Simile experience recently. Took my eye off the road to change a poxy radio station and hit a stone that had come off the kerb. Going very handy and still lost two tires.
Arne Slot statement
What to say? What can anyone say at a time like this when the shock and the pain is so incredibly raw? I wish I had the words but I know I do not.
All I have are feelings that I know so many people will share about a person and a player we loved dearly and a family we care so much about.
My first thoughts are not those of a football manager. They are of a father, a son, a brother and an uncle and they belong to the family of Diogo and Andre Silva who have experienced such an unimaginable loss.
My message to them is very clear â you will never walk alone. The players, the staff, the supporters of Liverpool Football Club are all with you and from what I have seen today, the same can be said of the wider family of football.
This is not solely a response to tragedy. It is also a reaction to the goodness of the people involved and the respect that so many have for the boys as individuals and for the family as a whole.
For us as a club, the sense of shock is absolute. Diogo was not just our player. He was a loved one to all of us. He was a teammate, a colleague, a workmate and in all of those roles he was very special.
I could say so much about what he brought to our team but the truth is everyone who watched Diogo play could see it. Hard work, desire, commitment, great quality, goals. The essence of what a Liverpool player should be.
There were also the parts that not everyone got to see. The person who never sought popularity but found it anyway. Not a friend to two people, a friend to everyone. Someone who made others feel good about themselves just by being with them. A person who cared deeply for his family.
The last time we spoke, I congratulated Diogo on winning the Nations League and wished him luck for his forthcoming wedding. In many ways, it was a dream summer for Diogo and his family, which makes it all the more heartbreaking that it should end like this.
When I first came to the club, one of the first songs I got to know was the one that our fans sing for Diogo. I had not worked with him previously but I knew straight away that if the Liverpool supporters, who have seen so many great players over the years, had such a unique chant for Diogo, he must have special qualities.
That we have lost those qualities in such terrible circumstances is something we have not yet come to terms with. For this reason, we need everyone at the club to stand together and to be there for one another. We owe this to Diogo, to Andre Silva, to their wider family and to ourselves.
My condolences go to Diogoâs wife, Rute, their three beautiful children and to the parents of Diogo and Andre Silva.
When the time is right, we will celebrate Diogo Jota, we will remember his goals and we will sing his song. For the time being, we will remember him as a unique human being and mourn his loss. He will never be forgotten.
His name is Diogo.
It doesnât surprise me at all that Andy Robertson and Diogo Jota were best buddies. Two lovely, humble, intelligent lads who gave their all as footballers and let their intelligence inform their football. The sort of lads real supporters identify with the most because they imagine if they had ever been top level footballers thatâs how theyâd represent themselves.
Andy Robertson is my favourite Liverpool player and in years to come should be the spiritual leader of the club in the way Kenny Dalglish has been for so long. He just gets Liverpool and he gets human beings.
There shouldnât even be a question about him leaving. He has to stay because heâs the heart of a club which now needs that heart above all other qualities.
Why Diogo Jota, Liverpoolâs supreme goalscorer, was far more than just a footballer
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July 3, 2025Updated 9:26 pm GMT+1
This should have been the summer of Diogo Jotaâs life.
The Portuguese footballer had just won his first English Premier League title with Liverpool, the club he had served with distinction since 2020. Less than a month later, he was lifting another trophy â the UEFA Nations League â with his home country.
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He had married Rute Cardoso, his partner of 13 years and the mother of his three children, on June 22 and was looking forward to returning to Liverpool next week for the start of pre-season training.
But then came the cruellest twist. Jota and his brother, Andre Silva, were driving in a remote area of north-west Spain, near the Portuguese border, in the small hours of Thursday morning when their car crashed. Both men were killed.
The news has left football in a state of shock. Jota was only 28, in the prime of a career that had already yielded five major honours for club and country. He would have been a pivotal player for a highly rated Portugal team at next yearâs World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Instead, his story has been cut tragically short.
As his international team-mate Cristiano Ronaldo put it in his own statement, âIt doesnât make sense.â
Jota was a gifted, versatile attacker with a range of attributes. He was intelligent, a silky dribbler who was difficult to stop, and a poacher in the penalty area. He was nicknamed âJota the Slotterâ by Liverpool fans because of his cool and calm habit of picking the exact spot he wanted the ball to nestle in the net.
Yet football was only part of his story. Jota was beloved not just because of his prowess as a striker, but because of his warmth and friendliness as a human being. Darwin Nunez, his fellow Liverpool forward, said he would always remember his âsmile, as a good companion on and off the fieldâ, and he wasnât alone.
Diogo Jota won the Nations League with Portugal in June (Sebastian Widmann â UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
Jotaâs career began as a youngster at Gondomar, a small club in the Portuguese city of Porto, before he joined the youth setup at Pacos de Ferreira â a bigger outfit, but located nearby â in 2013. It was there where he broke into senior football, making his senior debut in October 2014 as a substitute in the Taca de Portugal, Portugalâs primary cup competition.
His first full season in the senior side caught the attention of Spanish side Atletico Madrid, who confirmed his signing in the summer of 2016. He would never actually appear for them as he was loaned to Portuguese side Porto in 2016-17 and then Englandâs Wolverhampton Wanderers in 2017-18.
In the Championship, Jota played a key role in Wolvesâ promotion to the Premier League, scoring 17 goals in 44 league matches as they won the title. Halfway through the campaign, Wolves secured his signature permanently from Atletico for around âŹ14million (ÂŁ12m/$16m by todayâs exchange rate).
He adjusted to the top flight quickly and his reputation began to soar. Across the next two seasons, Jota scored 16 league goals and provided six assists as Wolves secured back-to-back seventh-placed finishes, securing Europa League football for the 2019-20 season. He excelled on the European stage, too, scoring nine goals during his sideâs run from the competitionâs qualifiers to the quarter-finals.
His impact was noticed by then reigning Premier League champions Liverpool and their manager, Jurgen Klopp, and they signed him in 2020 for ÂŁ41m, bolstering their forward line, which already included the talented trio of Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Sadio Mane.
Klopp, who stepped down at Liverpool in 2024, wrote on his Instagram account today: âIâm heartbroken to hear about the passing of Diogo and his brother AndrĂŠ. Diogo was not only a fantastic player, but also a great friend, a loving and caring husband and father! We will miss you so much!â
Jota in action for Pacos de Ferreira in 2015 (Gualter Fatia/Getty Images)
Jota was at home at the elite level and flourished with increased quality around him. Christened a âpressing monsterâ by assistant manager Pepijn Lijnders â a reference to his relentless energy and habit of harrying opposition defenders â Jotaâs first goal came in a 3-1 victory over Arsenal. He went on to torment the north London club over the course of his Anfield career, but they were far from alone in suffering at his hands.
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He had a habit of delivering at big moments. He scored twice â at Arsenal, againâ in the Carabao Cup semi-final second leg in 2022, having already helped Liverpool reach that stage by scoring the winning penalty in a shootout victory over Leicester. More recently, he scored Liverpoolâs first goal under their new head coach, Arne Slot, who succeeded Klopp last summer.
Last season, just as Liverpool looked in danger of wobbling as they tried to close in on the league title, it was Jota who stepped up to equalise in a crucial match at Nottingham Forest in January.
His final goal for the club was the winner in the 1-0 victory over local rivals Everton in the Merseyside derby that pushed Liverpool closer to the title. It was a strike that epitomised his qualities: a slaloming dribble, turning defenders inside out, before a calm finish, outfoxing goalkeeper Jordan Pickford by hitting a shot inside the near post.
Jota scores his last Liverpool goal, against Everton in April (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
In his five seasons at Liverpool, Jota won everything there was to win domestically, collecting medals in the FA Cup and Carabao Cup, as well as that Premier League title. He scored 65 goals in 182 appearances in the process, tallies that would have been far higher had he not been dogged by injuries during his time at Anfield.
Yet when he was on the pitch, he always offered a goalscoring threat, and Liverpool were often a better team when he was in it.
To say he was and will remain adored by the Anfield faithful would be an understatement. Some players struggle to forge a bond with supporters, viewing football as a job and clubs as stepping stones on a wider career path.
Not Jota. He channelled the energy of Liverpoolâs famously febrile home crowd, just as he had at Wolves. He understood Liverpool as a city â a noisy, tough and raw place where football matters more than almost anything else. But he also played the game with enjoyment, a relentless work ethic and a drive and hunger to be the best player he could be.
The song fans wrote for him â âOh his name is Diogoâ, to the tune of Creedence Clearwater Revivalâs Bad Moon Rising â became an instant hit and reverberated around Anfield, away grounds and whichever European city Liverpool were visiting.
Behind the scenes, he was universally liked and admired. He was a supreme professional who never caused an issue for his manager. He was popular throughout the squad, but was closest to Liverpoolâs South American contingent â Uruguayâs Nunez, Colombiaâs Luis Diaz, who he sat next to in the dressing room at Anfield, and Argentinaâs Alexis Mac Allister.
Jotaâs passion for football knew no bounds. He was an excellent player of the EA Sports game FIFA, ranking No 1 globally in the FIFA 21 Champions Leaderboard on PlayStation in 2021, with an unbeaten 30â0 record. He also won the FIFA 20 ePremier League Invitational in 2020, held during the Covid-19 pandemic, representing Wolves and defeating future team-mate Trent AlexanderâArnold in the final.
Jota with his good friend Luis Diaz (Ian Kington/IKIMAGES/AFP via Getty Images)
He became one of the top registered FIFA 23 players in Europe, which meant he qualified to play in the eChampions League on his PlayStation 5. His âvideo gameâ goal celebration â where he would sit on the grass after scoring and mimic using a console controller â connected his two passions.
He formed his own e-Sports team, originally named after him in 2021, before being rebranded to become Luna Galaxy in 2023 â the name Luna deriving from one of his three Beagle dogs.
Sport was Jotaâs life, but he was a modern sportsman, one who appreciated that weaknesses were not something to be frightened of. In October 2024, he gave an interview to the Liverpool website where he spoke openly about the importance of mental health and his use of performance psychologists.
âSpeaking to someone and saying the problems out loud helps,â he said. âIt happens to me, I have a fear, but when I say it out loud, it already gives you a different feeling. I think thatâs one of the good reasons why you should speak to someone.â
Such openness and eloquence are not necessarily typical of a Premier League footballer. But, then again, Diogo Jota was not typical in any sense.
(Top photo: MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Oooohhhhh he wears the number twentaaayâŚ
Speeding
Reckless enough by Jota to be speeding mate, his brother lost his life due to his behaviour
The first line literally says accident. Give your head a wobble gâlad.
If he is driving at excessive speed its reckless and death by misadventure
Wouldnt most people be speeding when overtaking?
No,
I think they might you know. Rightly. Or. Wrongly.
Wrongly mate
He was significantly speeding in a sports car and this led to his death and the death of his brother
While its terrible he died , his reckless behaviour could have led to more innocent peiple dying
Agreed, it is very sad. We are the products of our decision making.
But thereâs not many who dont speed significantly when overtaking. We might have to consider getting people to slow down and pull over when us more important people are looking to get past them on the roads.
What sort of tism is this
You said he died in an accident, it looks like he didnt as his reckless behaviour caused the crash
Please apologise
The tire blew out. It was a freak accident.