{"id":776756,"date":"2026-07-03T15:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T15:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/776756\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T15:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T15:58:09","slug":"diogo-jota-tributes-paid-on-the-first-anniversary-of-former-liverpool-forwards-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/776756\/","title":{"rendered":"Diogo Jota: Tributes paid on the first anniversary of former Liverpool forward’s death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Wolves<\/a> boss Nuno Espirito Santo, who signed Jota on loan and then permanently for the club, told BBC Sport:<\/p>\n

He was a young lad [when he arrived at Wolves<\/a>], but a very special one – warm, humble and determined to repay the faith and effort that had been invested in him.<\/p>\n

Like every player, he found it difficult at first. The Championship is an extremely tough competition, especially for someone arriving from abroad. But it was precisely that challenge that helped shape Diogo into the player he went on to become.<\/p>\n

He never gave up, and when things didn’t go his way, he never let his head drop.<\/p>\n

At the risk of sounding like a cliche, it’s simply the truth. Everyone loved Diogo, absolutely everyone. Everyone at the club, everyone in the dressing room. Everyone.<\/p>\n

Even now, it’s difficult to think about him without feeling sad. He was an extraordinary young man, and we all miss him very much.<\/p>\n

Former Wolves<\/a> defender Conor Coady, who won the 2018 Championship title with Jota, told BBC Sport:<\/p>\n

With Diogo, it’s all good memories. The biggest memory isn’t winning games and scoring goals but more within the dressing room and what a friend he was. He was an incredible human being with such honesty and humility and someone I will remember forever.<\/p>\n

He was actually a dream team-mate to have and you add on top that he was an incredible footballer, then he was everything you wanted.<\/p>\n

He’s one of the biggest team players I’ve ever seen. Every day with us, he showed that selfless nature. From the first day he came in at Wolves<\/a>, you saw the competitive nature that set him apart too.<\/p>\n

He was desperate to win, even in head tennis. When the Portuguese boys came in, it helped create a culture that none of us had really seen and he was the first one to bring that. Diogo was a different animal, an absolute beast.<\/p>\n

Even before I knew him, I admired him and Ruben Neves for making that shift from Portugal at such a young age. To drop out of one of the biggest teams, Porto, in Portugal like Ruben did and come to the Championship is a massive jump.<\/p>\n

But them players coming to Wolves<\/a> changed my life for the better. They made me a better player and a better person and anybody in the Wolves<\/a> dressing room at the time will tell you the same things.<\/p>\n

I remember when he first came over and I was thinking, ‘I don’t think he knows how hard the Championship is going to be’, because a lot of people come and think, ‘oh it’s only the second division’.<\/p>\n

But Diogo was totally different. He was professional, committed and a really clever fella. Straight from the get-go, you knew he meant business and you saw that when we got promoted at the first attempt.<\/p>\n

Sometimes when players come from different countries, they stick to themselves a bit. I don’t know what I’d be like if I moved abroad.<\/p>\n

But him and the Portuguese lads that came were different. They mingled, they were getting in with the lads, organising things off the pitch and inviting everyone else. He threw himself into absolutely everything.<\/p>\n

Whenever I think about Diogo, I think about his goal in the FA Cup quarter-final for Wolves<\/a> against Manchester United<\/a>, with a place at Wembley on the line. We were on the counter-attack, he took off on the halfway line, shrugged off Luke Shaw then Diogo, who was mainly right-footed, dragged it onto his left foot and smashed it into the near post.<\/p>\n

That goal was made for Diogo Jota because not many players could score a goal like that. But he could. I admired that tenacity.<\/p>\n

I was over the moon for him on a personal level when he moved to Liverpool<\/a>. It was a bit strange because when he missed our game, that got the lads talking because Diogo would never not play.<\/p>\n

The rumour mill in the dressing room went into overdrive and then Ruben [Neves] told us. Sometimes when team-mates leave, you’re devastated and I was, of course, as his team-mate, but this was such a huge opportunity to go to a football club like Liverpool<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t have been happier for him for what he achieved and when he came back to the training ground, we took a big picture with him. If you were to pick any club for Diogo, you would pick Liverpool<\/a> just ahead of Wolves<\/a>. He gave everything and more for both those clubs.<\/p>\n

To have shared a dressing room with Diogo was an absolute honour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Wolves boss Nuno Espirito Santo, who signed Jota on loan and then permanently for the club, told…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-776756","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\/776756","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=776756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}