AT THIS time of year, with the transfer market abuzz, there is a tendency to view elite footballers as commodities.
Their price-tags, fees, resale values and contract lengths are discussed by us all with the casual air of stockbrokers observing the gilt markets.
And then on a sunny morning in early July, chilling news arrived from Spain which made all of that talk sound so trivial, so brutal, so cold.
Diogo Jota — newly wed to Rute Cardoso, his childhood sweetheart and mother of his three children — was dead at 28.
Jota was a freshly crowned champion of England with Liverpool and a mainstay of the Portugal team who had just won the Nations League again and are rated as dark horses for next summer’s World Cup.
But above all Jota was a human being, as fragile as the rest of us.
A husband, a father, a son and a brother to Andre Silva — the 25-year-old fellow professional footballer who perished with him yesterday when a tyre blew and his Lamborghini burst into flames.
Jota was at the peak of his powers and in the prime of his life — married for just 11 days, he had posted footage of his wedding on social media just hours before his death.
The poignance was agonising; the grief of those left behind unimaginable.
When the news of Jota’s death broke, it was a warm, sun-drenched summer’s morning in England.
The All England Club was opening up its gates for day four on Wimbledon’s lawns, the cricketers of England and India were preparing for the second day of the Second Test at Edgbaston and transfer speculation was fizzing around online.
Then, suddenly, the world of sport froze.
For while sport is the most important of unimportant things, we all know at heart that it is nothing more than a joyful distraction from that which truly matters.
At Anfield, masses of floral tributes were left and warm respects paid.
Liverpool is a club which has sadly experienced tragedy too often before and which honours those lost with a fierce, protective pride.
At Anfield, Jota will never be forgotten.
Few football clubs cherish their heroes quite as warmly and Jota the Slotter, the clinical finisher with that extraordinary burst of pace, was one of the best of Arne Slot’s champions.
Sometimes, while watching the Reds, you could forget that Jota was on the pitch. Then, with a sudden acceleration and a thrust of the boot, he had won them the match.
He so often proved the matchwinner when arriving from the bench, in the Anfield supersub traditions of David Fairclough and Divock Origi.
But as a deep-lying centre-forward or from the left wing, he was an integral part of the squad built by Jurgen Klopp, and honed by Slot, which won the title by a country mile last season.
Jota scored the first goal of the Slot era in a 2-0 opening-day victory at Ipswich and the last time he netted was the winner in the Merseyside derby in April.
A little over a month ago, he cavorted on the Anfield pitch when Liverpool lifted the Premier League trophy.
Jota, capped 49 times by his country, was not the star of his club or international teams. Those were Mo Salah and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Yet football’s Galacticos do not win trophies without the versatility and selfless work-rate of players like Jota.
Still, his record of 65 goals in 182 appearances for the Reds was extraordinary for a player who was not a regular starter.
In five seasons, he won every major domestic honour and played in a Champions League final, against Real Madrid in 2022, which Liverpool were unfortunate to lose 1-0.
After spells with Pacos de Ferreira and Porto in his home town, Jota arrived in England at Wolves, on loan from Atletico Madrid, and helped to propel Nuno Espirito Santo’s team from the Championship to the Europa League in three seasons.
At Molineux, his loss was also deeply felt by a club where he was “adored and cherished”.
Yet this year had represented his peak, as a footballer and as a man.
In the space of a month Jota won major honours with Liverpool and Portugal, then married his girlfriend of 12 years — the couple posing before the altar of a church in Porto with their two sons and baby daughter less than a fortnight ago.
“I’m the lucky one,” Jota had posted on social media.
How heartbreaking those words read now. How fragile we are.
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