Liverpool, Van Dijk ricorda Diogo Jota sul Times

December 28 – 12.44pm – LONDON

The memory has never gone away. Diogo Jota, the Portuguese Liverpool striker who died with his brother at the beginning of July in a car accident in Spain while he was traveling back to England to resume training, is everywhere at Anfield. It was also yesterday, before the Reds’ match against Wolverhampton, in the first seasonal match between the two Premier teams in which the Portuguese played: the homage was so great that Virgil Van Dijk took to the pitch with his former teammate’s three children as mascots, while Rute Cardoso, Jota’s wife for only a few weeks before the tragedy but his lifelong partner, watched from the stands. “Every day there is something that reminds us of what happened, because Diogo is part of us, part of the club, part of our family,” Van Dijk said. He did so in an editorial published by the Times, one in which, in taking stock of his 2025, from the joy of the title to the struggles of this first part of the season, he explains for the first time what it means for Liverpool to have lost the Portuguese striker and how much impact that tragedy has had on the players and the club.

the memory

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“Diogo meant a lot to me, to the team, to the club – writes Van Dijk -. First of all as a person: he was incredible, the way he behaved didn’t seem Portuguese but Scottish, so much so that we called him McJota. He worked hard, he always put the team first, he was always 100% whether he played or not. Diogo was always the one who pushed everyone to give their best, who set an example, who was ready to listen. In our group he was an important person. I remember that I had just returned to England from a holiday when I got the news. I will never forget it: it was really hard to digest, a shock for the whole world. In the following months I tried to be the best version of myself possible, to be there for the players, for the team, for the staff. But above all for Rute: I tried to make sure that all of them were taken care of, Rute, the children and the parents of Andre and Diogo. The club did an incredible job in this respect, but I didn’t expect anything different: this is a club where the thing that matters most is the family. My role was to observe, to see how everyone reacted to the loss, how they processed it. I had to listen, talk to the players, to some members of the staff. We all talked about it together immediately, I said that I would be there for anyone who wanted to talk about it, to vent. to deal with it or not. It’s how you react, and I think we were all fantastic at that.”

the homage

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“I and the other veterans in the team want to make sure that his memory is honored forever, not just this year: we will talk about it with the club, to understand how best to do it. His locker at the training center is still there, like the one in the dressing room at Anfield, but I think we can do more to remember him and it is a responsibility that I feel is very much mine. The fans sing for him in the 20th minute of every match: we have talked about it among ourselves and we have reached a point where it no longer affects us. It is a sign of respect in the fans, so it’s up to them to decide whether to continue it or not, but I want to let them know that it no longer has an effect on us. It’s not like the friendly against Preston, just two weeks after the accident. Or the minute of silence against Bournemouth in the season opener, when it was really difficult. We’re at a point now where we use the memory of Diogo as strength: he would have liked to see us win, to see us do well, and that’s the main thing.”