Diogo Jota leaves behind a beautiful young family
Sitting in matching onesies, the Jota family smiles out from their Christmas photoshoot, two proud parents with their three young children and trio of beagles.
Just 27 weeks after the photograph was shared on Liverpool and Portugal forward Diogo Jota's Instagram page, he would be dead. Early reports suggest the Portuguese, who had between the taking of the picture and his untimely passing lifted the Premier League trophy after a sensational season for his club, died when a Lamborghini driven by his brother crashed in Spain from a flat tyre.
The 28-year-old passed away alongside his sibling, 26-year-old fellow footballer Andre Silva who played in the second division of Portuguese football, as they drove along the A-52 in the province of Zamora, some 70 miles west of Valladolid in the Northwest of Spain.
Just weeks before, Jota had tied the knot with Rute Cardoso, that other smiling parent in the Christmas photograph.
They exchanged their vows on June 22, a proud post on Instagram showed.
Diogo proudly shoes of the Premier League trophy and his family
Snaps of the happy couple standing side by side were posted on both of their Instagram pages. There were images of them in front of the altar, showing their rings off and walking out of their ceremony being showered with confetti, a joyous pair with their lives ahead of them.
In a post on Rute's own page, images of her parading through a stunning stately home in her wedding dress clutching an immaculate bunch of flowers was captioned with the now devastating words: "My dream came true".
The road for Diogo and Rute had been a long one. The first image he had posted of them together on his Instagram page was 10 years ago, two young people posing for a selfie like so many teen couples do.
The young couple shared many happy holiday photos
The couple tied the knot in June this year
If the image was posted around the time it was taken, Diogo would have been 18 in it, a boy still playing for Pacos de Ferreira, a side competing in the Portuguese League system that has bounced between the country's first and second divisions in recent years.
In that moment, Rute wouldn't have known that her man, just another promising young player, would go on to play for Porto and Wolves, then really make his break with a £45million move to Liverpool to take on the lofty heights and expectations of Anfield.
She would have been unlikely to know too that he would go on to score 14 goals for his country across 49 appearances, to lift the Premier League, the FA and the League Cup twice.
They would have their own victories between them too. Roughly a month prior to his death, Diogo and Rute posed with the Premier League trophy in front of the Kop with their brood, their oldest and middle lads proudly wearing the same Liverpool shirt of their father while in Rute's arms their youngest just seven months old – a beautiful, still-tiny baby born in November 2024 with hair just starting to come through – wrapped in muslin.
Jota had never been afraid to boast about his family. Followers of his social media platforms watched in almost real time as his oldest grew from a baby to a cheeky young lad with a big grin.
They will have watched too as they proudly announced they were expecting their second and then their third with pictures of baby bumps and ultra-scan results.
There were first birthdays and portraits, announcements and holiday snaps. Before that there couple's shots, holidays with their mates and days out in Birmingham city centre around the time Diogo played for Wolverhampton.
The couple had come a long way since those days to the time of Diogo's final post, one mirrored on both their social media posts proudly stating: "A day we shall never forget".
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