Jota died <\/a>on July 3, 2025, in a car crash in Zamora, northwestern Spain, along \u2060with his brother Andre Silva. A close friend of Jota, Neves was a pallbearer at his funeral.<\/p>\nFootage filmed from the stands during the match and circulated on social media appeared to show supporters chanting \u201cJota\u201d.<\/p>\n
The shouts attracted the attention of Neves, who \u200cpointed to his eye and then up to the sky in response.<\/p>\n
Passing through the mixed zone after the game, Neves commented, \u201cI hope they don\u2019t go to pray afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n
In response to an Instagram post showing the footage, Ronaldo commented from his personal account.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe league must take action and punish this kind of fan behaviour,\u201d said Ronaldo.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is no longer football, and there have to \u2060be limits. People who behave like this should never be \u2060allowed to enter a stadium again.\u201d<\/p>\n
The game finished 6-0 to Al-Hilal, with Neves playing 75 minutes before being substituted.<\/p>\n
Al-Hilal Club Company announced in a statement on their website on Sunday that they \u2060had filed a complaint with the Saudi Arabian Football Federation relating to the incident. The Saudi Pro League club said they \u2060were \u201cconfident\u201d that measures would be taken to \u201cprotect the integrity \u2060of sporting competition from offensive practices\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Company expressed its absolute rejection of such actions targeting players or their families, or intended to cause personal offence,\u201d said Al-Hilal\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n
Later on Sunday, Al-Taawoun also released \u200ca statement regarding the incident, which strongly condemned the offensive chants.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch conduct is completely unacceptable and does not represent Al-Taawoun, its supporters or the values for which \u200cits \u200cterraces are known.\u201d<\/p>\n
Al-Taawoun say they will \u201ctake all necessary measures in coordination with the relevant authorities to prevent a recurrence and hold offenders accountable\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fans at Al-Taawoun and Al-Hilal game seem to taunt Ruben Neves by chanting the name of his deceased…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":770061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[591,218,59,632,3517,217,101,56,5387,54,55],"class_list":["post-770060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-europe","tag-football","tag-gb","tag-middle-east","tag-portugal","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-arab-emirates","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}