As the Premier League returns and Liverpool begin at Anfield, the power of football is ready to unite us all in remembering Diogo Jota…
LIFE goes on, as they say.
This is never more salient than in football.
Liverpool are champions, but we all start again on zero. Match of the Day has new presenters. Last year’s fantasy football stalwarts are under question.
Excitement, expectancy and anticipation are palpable. Grief is an unwelcome visitor to the party.
Tonight, Anfield and the Premier League convenes for the first time without Diogo Jota.
The sheer shock and disbelief about the death of Jota and his brother André Silva remain present for me and, I’m sure, you.
It still stops me in tracks. I still imagine the heartbreak his family must feel. I gaze at his teammates and wonder if they’re ok.
I try to imagine a world where he wasn’t injured against Chelsea in October 2024 and the chain of events that unfolded thereafter.
The incident is merely six weeks old. Nobody should be expected to have moved on or forgotten simply because football is back.
We want to honour Diogo and André’s memory. That means craving for time to stand still. To allow grief to be present for longer.
I was at the memorial outside Anfield the week after the news. I had this abiding thought about how that stadium had now given me every single possible emotion in my 20 plus years of going there.
I remembered what outside the ground was like after Tottenham. What inside was like when the players were all sitting on the pitch gazing into The Kop. For different reasons I wanted that back. I wanted us all to be together. Unified in a completely opposite feeling to that day.
I was at Wembley for the Community Shield last week. It was extremely uncomfortable hearing the disruption to the minute’s silence. But I’m uncomfortable with any planned silence which is Liverpool related and isn’t in Anfield, regardless of the opponent.
Tonight, we get that togetherness. We’re at our best as a football club in this sense. It’s literally the anthem. The crowd can energise the players. The thought of millions watching on in support can galvanise.
We’re at home. We call it this partly because it represents safety and belonging. Two things integral to dealing with grief.
This summer has adopted feelings far deeper than football. More than three points, one or none. Arne Slot will rightly reiterate that Liverpool simply must beat Bournemouth at all costs. These are the standards.
When remembering him as a player, there was something incredibly pure and wholesome about a Jota goal. He was a modern-day representation of a decorated Premier League forward from yesteryear because it was so natural.
The type of player whose name would flash up on teletext under your team’s score and leave you feeling like the world is turning exactly how it should.
That he’s not present in and around this Liverpool team anymore is still so very difficult to comprehend. We all feel it.
In time, he will be honoured properly at Anfield and immortalised around our famous stadium. He is intangibly linked to Liverpool FC. Forever 20 and forever 28-years-old. Forever a husband, father, brother and son and forever a friend and teammate.
Football has an incredible knack for being able to represent anything in life. Your highest high and lowest low.
There’s no need to analogise what grief represents in this instance, but starting this process and winning is the best step possible to remembering Diogo and André our way.
Together.
