{"id":462607,"date":"2026-02-06T16:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T16:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/462607\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T16:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T16:38:09","slug":"diogo-jota-former-liverpool-goalkeeper-caoimhin-kelleher-says-performances-and-results-at-his-old-club-are-not-quite-as-important-at-anfield-season-after-portugal-wingers-death-last-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/462607\/","title":{"rendered":"Diogo Jota: Former Liverpool goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher says performances and results at his old club are not quite as important at Anfield season after Portugal winger’s death last summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last November, Reds boss Arne Slot said his side miss Jota both as a player and a person.<\/a><\/p>\n

Those remarks came in the wake of an emotional post-match interview<\/a> from Liverpool<\/a> left-back Andrew Robertson after Scotland had qualified for the World Cup.<\/p>\n

Robertson said he had “been in bits” because he “couldn’t get my mate Diogo Jota out of my head” in the build up to a thrilling victory over Denmark which clinched their spot at the tournament.<\/p>\n

Kelleher, who made 67 appearances in all competitions for Liverpool<\/a>, having joined the club’s academy in 2015, posted on Instagram when Jota died that the former Wolves<\/a> player had become “one of my closest friends in football”.<\/p>\n

He acknowledged that coming to terms with Jota’s death had been “a bit easier” since he was no longer at Anfield.<\/p>\n

“I stay in touch with some of the guys there, I have a lot of good friends there. It’s a very difficult time for them, a difficult season, with circumstances that people probably aren’t taking into account too much,” explained Kelleher.<\/p>\n

“But it’s probably been a bit easier for me, being away from it, and not being in such close proximity to it every day.<\/p>\n

“From an individual aspect, for me to leave and play first-team football was obviously right, never mind the tragedy that happened. “<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last November, Reds boss Arne Slot said his side miss Jota both as a player and a person.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-462607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}