No wonder he sports a smile as
wide as the River Mersey. A devoted
follower of the Premier League as a
schoolboy, he is currently living the
dream at Liverpool. “I would go to my
grandfather’s house at the weekend
because he had the sports channel
which showed English Premier League
games,” he recalled in a piece with the
Wolverhampton Express and Star
newspaper. “I’d watch the Saturday
and Sunday matches and imagine
being part of it one day.”
While the vast majority of
Portuguese internationals cut their
teeth in the academies of Porto,
Sporting or Benfica,Jota did not
have this luxury. Unwanted by the
Portuguese club establishment, young
Diogo had to make do with a soccer
education under the radar, spending
nine years with Sport Club Gondomar,
a second-tier outfit located some
15km southeast of Porto.
Diogo, born and brought up in
the Massarelos district of Porto, the
city’s university quarter, first joined
the Gondomar academy at the age of
seven and proved an outstanding pupil.
Mainly used as a left-sided or central
midfielder or a playmaker, he wasT
hese are extraordinarily
productive times for Diogo
Jose Teixeira da Silva, aka
DiogoJota, the formidable
Liverpool and Portugal frontrunner.
This season, everything the versatile
25-year-old attacker has touched has
taken on a gilded hue, establishing
himself as a vital component in
Liverpool’s attack, piling up the goals
for the Reds – surpassing the 20-mark
for the first time in his career – and
becoming increasingly important for
the Portuguese national team.
On signing for Liverpool in a
£41 million deal from Wolverhampton
Wanderers in September 2020, some
mistakenly believed that he would only
have a bit-part role in the Anfield
squad, essentially recruited to provide
emergency cover for the prodigious
trio of Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane
and Roberto Firmino. HoweverJota
has turned out to be much more than
a rotation fix. Now clearly established
as one ofJurgen Klopp’s go-to guys in
attack, he has developed into a true
world-class operative; highly skilled,
fast, imaginative, industrious and a
ruthless finisher, while surprisingly
adroit in the air.Words:Nick BidwellIgnored by the academy scouts of Portugal’s giants
and cast aside by Atletico Madrid, Diogo Jota is
continuing to prove his doubters wrong at Anfield
JOT SHOT
PLAYER
BIOGRAPHY