Diogo Jota: Remembering former Liverpool & Portugal forward
Regardless of the distance, Jota could always be reached.
Former club president Paulo Menses, “After leaving Pacos did not change the phone number at all. It was not necessary. People always answered when they called.” He said.
“Sometimes, tragic conditions like him can make us too generous in our way of talking about those who passed us. But the situation was not for him. Indeed in a human – humility and gratitude – and they cannot be denied.
“When we were promoted to the best flight in 2018-19, he sent me a message, asked if he could come and watch it with humbleness. Then the day we won the league title, five seconds after the game was over, he said, ‘We did it again’.
None of this will be a surprise to those who share a dressing room with him.
Former Liverpool and now Brentford goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher remembered how to follow the Portuguese lower layers.
Kelleher on social media, “You have become one of my closest friends in football. We watched any football match where we can find everything about sports – usually your brother Andre’s games in your iPad.”
It seems almost contradictory that someone who is so deeply attached to the upbringing can adapt to where he goes, whether gondomar, Pacos, Porto, Wolverhampton or Liverpool.
“He was the most British foreign player I’ve ever met.” He said. “We were really kidding because he was Irish … I would try to claim him as Scottish, frankly. I called him Dioogo Macjota.
“We used to watch the darts together, enjoyed the horse races. Going to Cheltenham this season – it was one of the best times we had.”
It didn’t matter that Jota was an academy where he returned home. Nor a stand was built thanks to the transfer. Or he was scoring goals in the Champions League.
He was still the same man who overcome the possibility of being a footballer.
“He was an incredible young man – a powerful personality, a great character, and extremely competitive, always with the desire to win. But rather than anything, he valued honesty, directly respected people with him and spent little time for those who were eaten around the bush.” He said.
It was a football superstar that knew that if it wasn’t for Teresas’s help along the way.
