Sport
More Than a Game: Mourning Diogo Jota and the Power of Football
Football is in mourning. The tragic deaths of Liverpool striker Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva has cast a dark shadow over the sport which may never fully dissipate.
Liverpool, as a city and a club, are far too familiar with grief. Just weeks after celebrating a 20th league title, and the first in a generation in front of a packed Anfield, they are facing up to the unthinkable. Following on from the harrowing incident at the title parade, this is the cruellest twist of fate.
Less than a week on from the news breaking, everybody has come together. Matches, transfers and pre-season training, due to start on Monday but now delayed for the Reds, feel inconsequential; rivalries have melted into insignificance. While football has lost two of its own, it’s Jota and Silva’s family who are in sharp focus; his parents who lost two sons in the blink of an eye, and Jota’s wife Rute, his childhood sweetheart whom he married just last month and their three children who have been left without a father. It isn’t a football tragedy, it is a human tragedy; everything has been put into perspective.
But to say football isn’t important at all is wrong; its role has shifted. In everyday life, it is the ultimate escapism, built on community and a shared love. Jota’s life touched millions across the world, and the beautiful, poignant scenes at both Anfield and Molineux, the home of Wolves, his first English club, reflect its power. So many people dropped everything to flock to either stadium to pay their respects, take in the news and come to terms with their grief.
Football has always been a safe haven for emotion when society hasn’t been. Strangers laugh and cry at the match and forget all their problems; the reason Jota, and his brother, had such an impact on so many is because they were always capable of creating life-changing moments for ordinary people. That is what footballers can do; it is why fans of Liverpool and Wolves were in floods of tears over a man they had never met or known personally. Many compared it to losing a member of the family.
It hurts to think of what happens next for those most acutely impacted by this disaster. Liverpool are reportedly set to pay up Jota’s contract to his family as they come to terms with life without him. The players will eventually return to the training ground with their title defence in mind and play on without him. This is also a timely reminder, especially at this time of year at the height of transfer season when players are seen as commodities to be bought and sold, they are human. Anybody who has grieved knows that it is arguably worse when “normal” life resumes.
Most people didn’t know Jota, so his memory is naturally sustained by what he did on the pitch; his big goals for Liverpool, his role in getting Wolves promoted to the Premier League, his work-rate and energy. He was the quintessential player every manager loved, brilliantly intelligent but willing to do what he could for the team above all else. But there are those beautiful little insights from those who knew him or even met him briefly; his kindness and humble nature shone through.
It is easy and understandable to say that football doesn’t matter, and it feeds into wider fight for the game’s soul. Any talk of the materialistic part of the game should hold no place in conversations for the foreseeable future. But its heart and what it can achieve, how it brings people together, encourages openly displaying feelings and makes people fall in love with strangers they wouldn’t otherwise come across, has been on show in this most difficult of moments.
Football is still important in a different way. For all its ills, when it comes together like this, it proves itself a powerful force for good.
