One year on from the day football lost Diogo Jota, the tributes coming from those who knew him best are genuinely moving. Liverpool goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher, manager Arne Slot, former Wolves boss Nuno Espirito Santo, Conor Coady and Wolves sporting director Paulo Goncalves have all shared their memories of the Portuguese forward, and every single one of them tells the same story about the kind of man he was.
Kelleher, who shared a dressing room with Jota at Liverpool, spoke about him with the kind of warmth you only really hear when someone meant a lot to you. Slot, who only had a short time working with Jota before the tragedy, was equally generous in his praise. When a manager who barely knew someone still speaks about them like that, it tells you everything.
Nuno perhaps knew Jota the longest in a professional sense, having brought him through at Wolves and watched him develop into a player good enough to lead Liverpool's attack. His words carried the weight of someone who had seen the full picture, from a young lad finding his feet in England to a genuine top-level forward who could hurt any defence in Europe. Coady, who played alongside him at Wolves, added a teammate's perspective that felt honest and unscripted.
As a Manchester United fan, you spend a lot of time watching Jota cause your side problems over the years, and fair play to him because he was brilliant at it. The pace, the movement, the finishing, the knack for scoring in big games. He was the sort of player who made you groan when he was on the ball against your team and secretly wish you had him. That is as honest a compliment as a United fan can give a Liverpool player.
What makes these tributes land so hard is that Jota was only 28. He had his best years still ahead of him, a young family, and by all accounts a personality that lifted every room he walked into. Football is just a game at the end of the day, and moments like this remind you of that pretty sharply.
Let me know your thoughts.