Why Diogo Jota will always be Liverpool’s number 20

Then, in the 57th minute, the ball bobbles and bounces between two Everton defenders on the edge of the penalty area. Luis Díaz flicks the ball to Diogo Jota, who takes it with his right foot, glides past a defender with his left and hammers the ball in. The players crowd around Liverpool’s number 20 as Anfield erupts in a celebration that is one-third appreciation and two-thirds relief. 

In a few weeks, Liverpool win their 20th league title, and Jota reflects on the goal that calmed the nerves. “That’s the feeling I look for when I play football, that’s why you put all your life and all your efforts into moments like that, moments where you can decide an important game,” he says. “Pictures that will be shown for ever. It is a remarkable achievement for a small guy who came from Gondomar, where I had this dream.” 

Born in the Massarelos area of Porto, Portugal, to Joaquim and Isabel Silva, a crane operator and a car factory worker, Diogo José Teixeira da Silva and his younger brother, André, were supported in their love of football by their parents, who paid monthly subscriptions so they could play for their local side, Gondomar SC. Even when he was 16, despite a late-blooming talent that was becoming impossible to ignore as his small stature developed, Diogo’s parents were still going without so they could pay for him to play. “I could see them struggling to afford it,” he said.

Things began to change a year later when, at the age of 17, he signed for Paços de Ferreira, based in the Porto suburbs and usually found battling for a foothold in the Primeira Liga. With Silva being a common surname in Portugal, Diogo chose to adopt “Jota”, the Portuguese pronunciation of the letter J. 

Two years later, his promise led to an approach from Atlético Madrid, who promptly loaned him out to FC Porto, where he became a regular in Nuno Espírito Santo’s side, scoring nine goals and making his first appearances in the Champions League. In 2017, he followed Nuno to Championship side Wolverhampton Wanderers, part of a growing Portuguese contingent at the club. 

“We had to take the risk to come here,” Jota said about signing for a club battling to get into the Premier League. “Sometimes when you want to achieve something, you have to take a risk.”

Jota and Neves became Molineux favourites and regulars at Aromas de Portugal, a Wolverhampton coffee shop run by Mónica, a Porto native with no interest in football. They ate pastéis de nata, the taste of home, and revelled in a safe haven away from the passionate Wolves fans hunting for autographs and selfies. 

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The supporters who loved Jota knew he wouldn’t be there for long, such are the frustrations of supporting any team outside of the elite. In 2020, now 23, he signed for Liverpool for £41m. He took to life at Anfield seemingly effortlessly, with a debut goal in a vital 3-1 win against Arsenal beginning a run of goals in each of his first four home appearances. He became known as the man who would come up with a vital goal in a tight game.

He was not just a natural finisher but, in assistant coach Pep Lijnders’s phrase, “a pressing monster” who worked tirelessly to close down the opposition when they had the ball. Injuries frustrated him, keeping him out of the 2022 World Cup, and he spoke bravely about the importance of reaching out to others as a way of looking after mental health in such times of darkness. “Speaking to someone and saying the problems out loud helps. It happens to me, I have a fear, but when I say it out loud, it already gives you a different feeling,” he said.

Fitness struggles and some uncharacteristic spurned opportunities in front of goal meant that Liverpool’s title-winning season of 2024-25 was not Jota’s greatest personally. Still, by the end of it, he had every reason to feel elated. He had scored important goals against Nottingham Forest and Everton, was a favourite of new coach Arne Slot and on June 22 he married his teenage sweetheart, Rute Cardoso, with whom he had three children.

Eleven days later, unable to fly because of recent lung surgery, he was driving with his brother to catch a ferry from Santander back to England. He had just pulled his Lamborghini out to overtake on the A-52 motorway when a tyre blew out, and moments later the incredible life of the small guy who came from Gondomar was extinguished.

That winner in the April 2025 Merseyside derby proved to be the last goal Jota would score. There would have been many more.

Shortly before his death, Jota was asked if he was able to comprehend all that he had achieved in his career – winning promotion at his beloved Wolves, playing 49 times for Portugal and lifting the Premier League and both domestic cups at Liverpool, where fans still sing his name. “I’ll just keep collecting the moments,” he said. “That’s the aim.”