Portuguese footballer Diogo Jota dies aged 28 in car accident
The 28-year-old had been playing for Liverpool since 2020 and had 49 appearances for the Portuguese national team.
Diogo Jota, a 28-year-old Portuguese footballer who played for Liverpool, and his brother André Silva, 26, died this morning in a car crash in the Spanish province of Zamora.
The English Premier League player died when the car he was travelling in with his brother, also a professional footballer currently playing for Penafiel FC, crashed at kilometre 65 of the A-52 and burst into flames.
According to witnesses who called 112, the vehicle was engulfed in flames, which also spread to nearby vegetation. Spanish sports daily A Marca cites several sources who point to a tyre burst during overtaking as the possible cause of the accident.
Diogo Jota was travelling to England with his brother to start another season with Liverpool. The Portuguese international player was advised not to fly due to a surgery he underwent after taking part in the Nations League, according to A Bola.
According to the sports daily, the two brothers were travelling to Santander, where Jota would continue his journey on a ferry to Portsmouth.
The athlete, who was born in Gondomar, a town in the north of Portugal, leaves behind three children, two boys and a girl who is just six months old, and was married on 22 June to long-time partner Rute Cardoso.
The striker’s career began in the youth teams of Gondomar, followed by Paços de Ferreira, where he excelled, prompting a move to Atlético de Madrid. He ended up not playing in Spain and was sent out on loan to FC Porto in the 2016/2017 season, which marked the beginning of his greatest success.
He then went on loan to Wolverhampton in England, who won the Championship in 2018, returning to the Premier League with Diogo Jota as one of the team’s leading figures.
He joined Liverpool in 2020 from Wolves, scoring 65 goals in 182 games for the current Premier League champions. He won the Premier League in the 2024/2025 season, the FA Cup in 2022 and the FA League Cup in 2022 and 2024 for the Reds.
Diogo Jota made his debut for the Portuguese national team on 14 November 2019 and since then has 49 appearances and 14 goals. He also made 9 appearances for the Under-19s, 20 for the Under-21s and one at the Olympic Games.
The last game of his career was the Nations League final on 8 June, in which Portugal beat Spain to win the trophy for the second time.
Jota was a very popular figure in the Liverpool dressing room and much loved by the club’s fans, who even had a song dedicated to the ‘number 20’.
The Liverpool flag at Anfield has been put up at half-mast and the club has cancelled training sessions scheduled for this Thursday and scheduled a tribute match for the player for July 13th. In a statement, the current English champions describe an “unimaginable loss”.
On the social network X, the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) says it is “completely devastated” by the death of Diogo Jota and his brother André Silva. “Much more than a fantastic player, with almost 50 appearances for the national team, Diogo Jota was an extraordinary person, respected by all his team-mates and opponents, someone with a contagious joy and a reference in his own community”, reads the post.
The FPF says it has already asked UEFA to hold a minute’s silence before the Portuguese national team’s match against Spain in the women’s European Championship on Thursday.
